Day 15: Haifa, Israel - Getting My Depression On

No pictures today. I spent the morning at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which doesn't allow pictures, and the rest of the day on a bus to Haifa in northern Israel.

I've visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was everything one would expect it to be -- somber and depressing. Someone in my hostel told me Yad Vashem is actually quite different and that, even if it wasn't terribly different, a visitor to Jerusalem should not miss it. That seemed to make sense to me. I grabbed my bag from the hostel, checked out, and carried my entire livelihood with me to Yad Vashem.

The first thing I noticed was that Yad Vashem is a bit in the middle of nowhere. It's nowhere near the Old City or the New City. It's clear on the other side of Jerusalem in the hills. There's residences nearby, but even those are a bit sparse compared to some of the more densely populated areas. the museum is built onto the side of the hills in three different tiers. Walking to the museum feels like walking away from the city and into something with a little more gravitas.

Yad Vashem is different from the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Washington DC's museum was more concerned with artifacts and was anti-Nazi in theme. Yad Vashem is more concerned with narratives and is pro-Israel in theme. Having visited Dachau five years earlier, it was a very moving experience.

The museum itself is a linear alignment of displays and history told through the voices of various individuals who kept diaries, published memoirs, etc. It details the rise of the Nazi party, the sources of anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish legislation, creation of ghettoes, liquidation of ghettoes, and surprisingly little about the concentration camps themselves. Much more attention was given to the migration of Jews before the Holocaust and after the Holocaust, including, of course, the creation of Israel.

By far the most powerful exhibit isn't even an exhibit. It's the Hall of Names. Towards the end of the linear route, visitors enter a circular room with a hole in the middle that plummets down into a clear pond. All around the room are volumes and tomes of names of Holocuast victims. The purpose of the Hall of Names, and Yad Vashem, a sign explains, is to give names to those who had theirs erased during the Holocaust.

At the end, the museum spits visitors out onto a magnificent vista that overlooks the hills and villages farther away. A fitting conclusion.

That afternoon I took a bus to Haifa, a city in northern Israel. I didn't really have a purpose other than to see another city and possibly the Bahai Gardens.