"the holocaust martyrs' and heroes' remembrance authority"

The last three days have left me completely exhausted. Every morning, I wake up the same way I always do-- reluctantly hauling from my bed, brushing my teeth, eating crappy food, and fumbling to class or the bus --and stare down eight to ten hours of Holocaust Studies.

On Monday it was endless classtime; reading excerpts from Nazi documents and partisan correspondence, writing down facts and figures and bulleted lists of political thought and motivations. All morning in class, lunch, afternoon with a Holocaust survivor, class, dinner, class, sleep. There was no time to think about what was coming into my head, no time to consider the gravity of the subject-- I was too busy taking notes.

The next day was our Resistance Tiyul. Wandering vaguely through the Carmel Mountains and looking out past a ruined crusader castle to the Mediterrenean sea, I kept myself awake with a steady stream of chewing gum, chocolate gelt, and whiny conversations with my friends. After the hike, we went to the Ghetto Fighter's Museum, one hour away. I gazed blankly into the pixelated photos of partisan soilders, smiling grimly out at me from their dull foamboard.

And then today. Yad Vashem. It's so hard to write about these things coherently; please forgive me.

In one of the rooms is a narrow display shaped like a strip of film negatives. Each panel shows a different image. In one, men running from trucks to a forest clearing, S.S. officers urging them on. In the next, the men pick up shovels; in the next, they begin to dig trenches while the soilders look on. Gold and grey captions run below the images: "The Jews were made to believe they were simply performing forced labor" one said.

Among the panels is a photograph taken right on the edge of one of the trenches, looking down at the men and boys working below. In the center of the image is a young man, with rumpled dark hair casting a shadow over his eyes. His head is turned, his brow furrowed; he stares out of the frame at something we will never be able to see. He looks preoccupied, concerned. Behind him, two older men work, their backs turned to the camera. The young man wears a numbered canvas jumpsuit, one size too large and bunched up around the waist. And his hands: still wrapped around the handle of his shovel, reaching down to take another load of earth from what, in moments, will be his grave.

In the next panel, the Einsatzgruppen-- the death squad --line up the men along the trenches, one man every twelve meters, backs turned on their murderers. Five gunmen point their weapons at each man, and the officers, thumbs between their buttons, look on. In the final photograph, they fire. The photo blurs as the bodies fall.

This display is the only thing in the museum which made me cry.