On Sunday, we boarded the bus and headed to Yad Vashem. As I was boarding the bus, I was already anticipating it to be a difficult and somber day as we would be studying the history of the Holocaust. As we entered the museum, our tour guide informed us of the meaning of the word Holocaust, which means “burnt offering”. He explained that he would be using the word “Shoah”, which means “destruction”.
The museum begins with a look at the rise of Hitler and the Nazi power. As you meander through the hallways and exhibits, you are exposed to the progression of the Nazi movement. You hear stories of beautiful, innocent people who were persecuted and tortured, and you also hear stories of survivors.
As I was walking through the museum looking at the pictures and listening to our tour guide, all I could think of was the difficult choices the Jewish people needed to make in order for their own survival and the survival of their families. Everything in their lives became a matter of life or death.
The most difficult part of visiting the museum was walking through the Children’s Memorial. As you walk in you need to hold on to the railing as the room is darkened. I felt like I was looking at the night’s sky because the room is filled with tiny lights, each of which represent one of the 1.5 million children whose lives were brutally taken during the Shoah. As you walk through the memorial, the names, ages, and nationality of each child is announced. As a mother, all I could think of was how much of a tragedy it is to take the lives of innocent and pure children.
This was the most emotional day of the trip for me and it is something that I will never forget.