A Name and A Place - Yad Vashem

After lunch we went to a Holocaust Memorial called Yad Vashem. That was amazing. At the very end of the "tour" (it's very much self-guided, but there is an order to it) there is a room called the Hall of Names. In the room they have book after book after book on shelf after shelf after shelf filled with names of Holocaust victims. It is tragically beautiful. The books and shelves are black. A few things struck me there. (1) The shelves weren't full — as if they were expecting to add more; and (2) The room is cylinder in shape, and in the middle there is a well extending into the bedrock. The sides are rock, and at the bottom is some amount water. I don't know how full it is, but to me it seemed to represent the tears of those who suffered in and for the Holocaust. There was no explanation, so this is just what I felt, and what it means to me. I would have loved to have a picture of it, but they don't allow photographs inside.

The museum was built to convey a feeling of being forced and corralled, and it's quite effective. The walls are hugely tall and solid concrete. They slope in, giving the visitor a feeling of entrapment. They are so high you feel you can't get out, no matter what you do. The tour is set up so that one zig-zags across a main corridor, that you can't walk down because it is roped off. Interestingly, though there is a lot of space there are more people than there is space, so the feeling of claustrophobia is quite real. At times the press of people forces you to move forward, even if you want to pause. I wept internally as I walked through the space, and my heart aches still as I recount this.