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Yad V'Shem Visit by Sarah Shaw
Yad V'Shem is designed to make you struggle. At the beginning of the museum you see a happy, smiling family. The museum is designed in such a way that as you get deeper in to the museum you can still see the image, but it gets harder and harder to see. Ultimately, as you reach the end of the museum you can still see the wall, but it is extremely difficult, , even impossible, to see the image. Happiness has given way to struggle as one might expect with an event as horrific as the Holocaust.
The grounds surrounding the museum are filled with memorials. The first building constructed in Yad V'Shem was not a memorial for a person, a group or an event. It is a simplistic room with a single memorial grave. On the floor are names of places that were affected by the Holocaust. The places were chosen because they were the places most talked about by survivors. This memorial represents a spiritual struggle rather than a physical struggle. After World War Two ended, survivors did not have and outlet to tell what happened to them. They were only able to talk when Nazi trials began at Nuremberg in 1948 and after.
Perhaps the two most distinctive memorials for most people who visit Yad V'Shem are the cattle car memorial and the children's memorial. The cattle car presents an extreme physical struggle. On the wall of the memorial site there is a quote from a survivor's testimony. It is presented in a way that no matter how you adjust your angle of vision relative to the wall, the reader must shift back and forth to read the entire thing. The testimony portrays the Jews in the cattle car fighting over water and air space, in order to survive.
The designer who created the cattle car memorial also designed the children's memorial. The memorial is broken into two parts. The outside has stone pillars of different heights. These symbolize the children who were not able to grow into adults because of the Holocaust. This is immediately juxtaposed to the trees nearby which were planted as seedlings and allowed to grow to their maximum height.
Entering the cave-like second section of the memorial, there is a room with pictures of some of the children represented in the memorial. In the second chamber, there is also a hall of candles and mirrors. These are in place of the one and a half million children who died in the Holocaust. It is impossible to imagine that many people as individuals or as a group, therefore the mirrors are in place in or to illustrate the millions of children who died. You cannot tell which are real candles and which are reflections. Perhaps this ref;ects our inability to clearly and fully see the children who died in the holocaust as in a hall of mirrors always distorting our perception. The designer of the memorial designed it intending for there to be only one candle in the memorial, though the museum keeps two or three lit to ensure that there is always a lit candle in the memorial.
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