Notes after Yad Vashem

Today's experience of witnessing my own handwriting lending testimony to those members of my family who were murdered in the Shoah will (hopefully) never leave me.My handwriting. My history.

So often I don't feel Australian. In America hell yes I did, for I was unique, and my upbringing seemed so foreign to those American students. When comparing the simple things, it was the subtle differences that made me feel special.
Yet nor do I feel the connection to Israel anymore. I, a jaded tourist perhaps, wandering thw rold, appreciate and enjoy travelling throughout this country - but then I am just that: a tourist. I don't feel comfortable anymore speaking the language that I onced dreamed in. What has happened?

Viewing the Jewish life in Europe previous to the War made my eyes prickle with tears - I was instantly overcome with emotion. Looking at the tiny black and white faces grinning at the camera lense, children waving and beckoning at the movie camera lense - I wanted to bawl right then and there, at the very entrance of the museum. I find it interesting the way I experienced the New Museum at Yad Vashem this afternoon. I tended to skim over the historical facts that I could recite by heart - the Nuremberg Laws, the burning of the books, Krystallnacht, the layout of the death camps and the crematoria. Is that bad? I didn't care much for the video footage of thousands of Nazis at a rally in Berline, nor of Hitler giving his speeches about the Jewish 'vermin' - complete with enough spittle to last a lifetime. What moved me most throughout each exhibit was the artwork displayed that was created during those horrific times. The feelings they conveyed touched me much more than the number crunches, and the graphic images of corpses in mass graves. The testimonies of survivors, their voices cracking over certain words, certain memories. That's what moved me. The tales of survivors surviving their survival after the Shoah - struggling to rejoin society, with the burden of their grief, experiences, losses and nightmares.

I wept when I found a scan of a document I filled out on behalf of Papa two years ago on the Yad Vashem database of the victims of the Shoah. There were many documents. His sister, Giza, a 'cosmetician'. Matylda. Cylka. His father. Even Helena. I wept as I clicked from document to document - these special people, these members of my family, my past - a past that has made me who I am today - were finally chronicled in Yad Vashem. In my handwriting. I've never felt more proud. I've never felt more connected to my history than this afternoon. Wow.

The Yad Vashem museum was one of the best I've ever been to. The memorial park definitely needed this new museum - it gives so much weight to the other monuments in the complex. Not only for those who have never been to Yad Vashem, nor for those unfamiliar with the history of the Shoah, but its important for those who, like myself, teeter on the obsessive when it comes to Holocaust studies. For those who have visited Yad Vashem prior to the opening of this New Museum. It reminds us where we came from, and, as one exits the new building, it reminds us where we are right now. As one leaves the exhibit you are on a sheltered balcony overlooking the valleys of Jerusalem, the sun dazzling, with an open view of the afternoon sky. The Jewish people are here to stay.

Take that Nasrallah.