Today was one of those days that wasn’t fun, awesome and amazing. It was a sad day full of spiritual maturity and moments that really made you think about life, and more so, life as a Jew. First, we went to Yad Vashem Israel’s holocaust museum. When you first walk into the museum you are surrounded by grey walls that slant inwards and a dull grey carpet in a poorly lit room. As the guide  explained this was meant to help us understand how the Jews felt during the holocaust-trapped and hopeless always looking for a seemingly unobtainable exit – and that it did. As we went through the museum we saw a living land scape of Jewish life in Europe before the Shoa started. This montage was filled with pictures and videos of Jews living happy lives, they were comfortable and had no idea of the impending tragedy. We saw anti-Semitic books and games made for German children, pictures of nazi meetings, propaganda portraying Jews as parasites and monsters. We continued on to see pictures of mass graves, concentration camps and other horrible atrocities of the Holocaust. At one point we stopped in front of a model of the Triblinka and were explained that it was designed to look like a two way train station: a mechanism to fool Jews into thinking they were being sent for work and that they might have a chance of coming back. Little did they know they were being lead to their deaths. Once again it was shown that the Jews had no idea how bad things really were. At one point we were lead to a massive pile of shoes. Shoes that could fit a child or your father or your mother. We all knew that these shoes were the last remains of dead victims and that what we were looking at wasn’t simply a pile of worn Down shoes, it was a grave. I think at that point a lot of us started crying: to think that this many people could have died and all traces of them erased except for their shoes. It hit us hard. The last thing we did at Yad Vashem was the children’s memorial. It was a room filled with little lights that looked like stars and as we walked through names of children were read out loud. Our tour guid told us to try and remember a name so I remembered Gurshon Fueler, a six year old from the Ukraine.

After Yad Vashem we walked through Har Herzl and saw the graves of many soldiers. As we were walking through I noticed that some of the soldiers were 16 years old and our tour guide explained that some kids joined the army during the independence war of 1948. To me 16 seemed so young to have died fighting until we went to visit the grave of 10 year old Nasim Gini who had died in the streets of Jerusalem in 1948 helping in army communications. We also visited the grave of Theodore Herzl and the graves of other soldiers that had fallen. Some people on our bus even knew some of the buried soldiers and we were all left in tears.

After Har Herzl we went to Bar Ilan university for a seminar on Israeli advocacy. We met Natalie, a teacher of the advocacy program who spoke to us about The Arab-Israeli program. She began by presenting us with pro-Palestinian arguments that really confused us. In a matter of minutes we were all yelling and shouting about our differing opinions. We later realized she was prompting us with situations that forced us to think and ask the right questions. It was a really interesting experience. Over all the entire day was very educational and was a great experience.

– Julia  Silverman