A very mind-numbing day...

This a relief statue of the Jews being marched to a death camp. It is outside the museum. 

These are olive trees that have been planted in honor of the Non-Jews who helped to save the Jews. 

This is the relief statue outside the children's museum. 

This is the entrance to the Holocaust Museum 

This is the amazing view that you see when you walk out of the Holocaust Museum 

This is Elias, the Holocaust survivor that came and spoke to us. 

The title of my post is a very mind-numbing day because about a week and a half ago I went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum that is in Jerusalem. It was a very difficult day for me and it has taken me awhile to come to terms with all that I saw and felt that day. The Holocaust for me has always been a bit of a hazy subject because it feels so far removed from who I am today and from the present time that I live in. I learned about it some in high school and I grew up always knowing what it was, but until living in the Holy Land and taking a very intensive, cultural class about Judaism I truly haven't known the history of the Jewish people, nor the magnitude of what the Holocaust actually was. I won't go into detail about the details of the Holocaust, but I will go into detail about what I saw and felt that day.

Yad Vashem, was a scheduled field trip that we take as a class together with our Judaism teacher who is named Ophir Yarden. He is truly a great teacher and I have loved learning from him over the last two months. He came to the Museum with us and gave a devotional before we ever entered into the Museum. Yad Vashem is up on Mt. Hertzl, so you drive up into the hills to get to Yad Vashem. The first place I went to was the Children's Museum and it was probably the hardest part of the whole experience.

The Children's Museum is dedicated to all of the children that died during the Holocaust. I ended up being the last person to go through the museum and it was very tender for me. As you walk in the doors, there is  complete darkness in the room. All you can see are five black and white photos of Jewish children that had perished in the Holocaust. You continue walking down the hallway and when you get to the end you start to hear a voice and the voice is saying children's names that died in the Holocaust. It was so hard to hear that voice saying children's names. I walked to the end of the hallway and walked into a room where there were thousands of candles everywhere in remembrance of all the children. I walked into that room and so much sorrow came over me; Tears started streaming down my face and I just couldn't stop the tears. It honestly felt like the tears I was shedding were for all of the children that had passed away. It was a very poignant experience for me to feel so much love and empathy for these children that I didn't even know.

After going through the Children's Museum we went into the actual museum and I spent about two hours walking through. The Museum is made up of ten exhibits that show the major events of World War 2 and the Holocaust. I wandered through and saw the harshest, most gruesome pictures and videos about the sufferings of the people. I won't go into great detail about all that I saw, but there were some things that hit me very hard. Every wall had pictures of people from the Holocaust, there were testimonials of the Nazis about what they did and why they believed it was the right thing, and there were videos of survivors who told of their experiences. I saw picture after picture of men, women, and children who looked like skeletons. I still can't get the images out of my head. It was so awful to see survivors sharing their story with tears streaming down their faces at the suffering they had gone through. Each exhibit focused on a different part of the war and the Holocaust in chronological order. It all began with Adolf Hitler coming into power and the anti-semitism laws he created against the Jews. Slowly, over a few years the Jews were forced to wear the star of the david, they were forced into ghettos, and finally they were marched to death camps all over Europe.

There were pictures and videos of huge parades and ralleys with Hitler at the front and all of the Nazi soldiers screaming and cheering for their "emperor". I could not and still cannot believe the inhumanity I saw that day. I cannot comprehend how someone could be so evil and bring so much suffering to so many people. It broke my heart to see the suffering of all those people. I walked through that museum with a sense of horror and sorrow at what all of those people experienced. The worst moment for me was when I walked past a huge glass box full of shoes. The shoes were from the men, women, and children that had perished in the Holocaust and that's when I couldn't hold it together anymore. I stood there and cried and cried at the awful horror. It was truly eye opening to experience this.

The last exhibit I walked through was the Hall of Remembrance which is a huge room with books lining the walls with all of the names of the people who died in the Holocaust. Also, in this room were thousands of pictures of the Jews that had died. It was amazing to see all of their faces and it was humbling to know that they were being remembered. Outside the museum there were many olive trees planted for the people that saved Jews from dying. There were many people who helped to save Jews, but eventually were found out and were later killed because of it.

At the end of the day, all of the students had a family home evening where we had a Holocaust survivor come and speak to us. He is 95 years old and he survived 9 different camps including Auschwitz as one of them. He told us his whole story and it was so hard to hear, but at the same time I am so grateful that he was willing to share with us his experiences. He is one of the happiest men I have ever met in my life. He just kept laughing and smiling at everything! It was amazing to me to see that he could go through such horrible experiences, but he could overcome it and have such a fantastic, happy outlook on life.

I am sorry for how in depth this was, but I wanted to share this meaningful experience with everyone, so that everyone can appreciate all of mankind and realize that we are all children of a Heavenly Father who loves all of us. I am grateful for the experience I did have, so that i could learn more about the Holocaust and so that I could resolve myself to living a better life and remind myself that I need to love everyone.