(Community Matters) We toured Yad Vashem, led by our guide, Itay Ben Zoken. My second time there. Like an onion, I enjoyed the layer one sees the next time.
this map depicts the number of Jews who lived where at the outbreak of WWII
For some reason, this visit I especially remember the Warsaw exhibit – ie., the images from Poland’s Jewish ghetto established by the Nazi’s. Over 3mm Jews lived in Poland, the world’s largest concentration of Jews at the time – in no small part because of the country’s statutory religious tolerance and autonomy. From Poland’s founding in the 11th through the 16th century, it was even known as Jewish paradise. After WWI, religious tolerance and autonomy were again in place, though anti-semitism ran high up until WWII. 90% of Poland’s Jews (over 3mm) were killed by the Nazis.
There was a short film titled Culture Without Walls,“the walls of the ghetto did not stifle the cultural creativity of residents.”
there’s one picture – on the wall to the right as you start into the Warsaw Ghetto exhibit – which particularly haunted me, especially in light of our visit to Bethlehem and other lands in occupied West Bank just the previous day. It shows Jews behind the ghetto wall, looking out, trying to view what’s happening outside the ghetto. You can tell they are hungry & scared. Though there is no comparison to the murders during the holocaust, to the genocide – for those Jews in the ghetto who did not know their fate, was the tragedy at that time in anyway similar to the fear & hunger being experienced by some of the 1.5mm locked behind the Gaza walls? Those not supporting Hamas, certainly not taking up arms, simply swept up by politics, anger and war – do they share any of the feelings and hell experienced by the Jews in Poland as they were locked behind the ghetto walls?
Community Matters 