This past week we went to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem (called Yad Vashem in Hebrew). It was powerful, moving, disturbing, and emotional. We were only there about 1.5 hours, but a person could spend all day reading about the details of the Holocaust and listen to the movies. If you ever get a chance to go, you should budget a minimum of 3-5 hours. The museum is completely free, but you have to pay for the headphones (which are optional). The headphones are definitely worth the price because it is like having a personal tour guide through the museum. Did you know that more than 6 million people were murdered during the Holocaust? Did you know that after the war was over most countries did not allow Jewish people to seek refuge in their country?
The museum starts out with a movie about Jewish life before the Holocaust. Just past this area are some graphic pictures that were taken from allied forces after the war was over. The pictures were taken at one of the concentration camps. When the war was almost over the Nazis tried to cover their tracks and shot all of the remaining Jewish workers at the camp. They piled their dead bodies on wood stacks and set it on fire. This ended up being a failed attempt because not all of the bodies were burned. The allied forces were able to recover items from the pockets of these victims. In the pockets they found pictures of loved ones and pictures of events before the war. These pictures depicted lives of normal people like you and me (going through life without a care in the world). One picture had a group of friends laughing and hanging out on a couch. Another picture had a group of friends laying on a beach smiling and having a good time. Little did they know how much their lives would change in the coming months and years. It was a reminder that these were real people, with real lives, and real stories. For so long the atrocities that happened during the Holocaust seemed distant, but it suddenly felt so real. In the museum I found myself going through a wide range of emotions. My eyes kept welling up with tears and I was upset, broken, and hurt. I found myself asking one question after another. Why? How could anyone do this? How could soldiers follow through with their orders? How could the Germany people be so brainwashed? How could something like this ever happen?
Recently I had the opportunity to see a history channel documentary called “A Deadly Deception“. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend finding a copy. You can probably find it on YouTube.com, or you can Amazon to buy a copy. In the video it talks about anti-semitism (racism) towards the Jewish people. There was a piece of literature they talk about in the video called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” It was created in 1897 by the Russian secrete police in Moscow to incite fear and racism towards the Jewish people. The literature outlines 24 steps for world domination by the Jewish people and it depicts the Jewish people as evil and sneaky. I know it sounds outlandish, but people believed it. The literature was eventually discredited as a hoax, but the damage was done. There were business savvy people like Henry Ford who believed the lie, even after it was discredited. He ended up spending a lot of his own money to make copies of it available to the general public at all of his dealerships. Later Hitler (a big fan of Henry Ford) used the literature as the major platform for the Holocaust. Hitler put copies of the “Protocols” in the hands of every German soldier. To this day, the literature continues to be distributed around the world (even though it has been proven to be a hoax).
Today there are still concerns within the Jewish community about a second Holocaust. My first reaction to hearing this was “yeah right!” But let’s think about this for a minute… are genocides still happening around the world? Yes. Are there people in this world that believe the “Protocols” to be true? Yes. If the United States and Great Britain ever stopped supporting Israel, would they be in trouble? Yes. Would every country surrounding Israel love to eliminate them from the face of the earth (not to mention the Palestine government)? Yes. Now ask yourself… could a second Holocaust really happen in this day and age? Is it too far fetched to imagine? My hope is the United States will always be at Israel’s side “for better or for worse, til death do us part“.
