Yad Vashem

We spent about 3 hours at Yad Vashem, a Holocaust Memorial that opened in 2005.

You can't really call it a museum. It features a museum as well as several other exhibits and memorials.

One of the first things we viewed was the Children's Memorial, a structure erected to commemmorate the 1.5 million children killed during the holocaust. The couple that paid for it did so after guaranteeing that a motif of their son's face would be the first thing visitors saw as they approached.


Inside a dark room, there are five candles that burn continuously. A system of 500 mirrors reflects their light to make it look like there are 1.5 million candles burning. As you look at the lights, a narrator reads the names, ages and countries of every child killed (in three languages).

We also toured the Historical Museum. Architecturally, it is very attractive. It's a prism-shaped building. On the inside, there is a long corridor down the middle. The exhibits zig zag from right to left chronicling the begin of the Nazi era to the liberation of the concentration camps. There are photos, videos and artifacts telling the story at multiple levels.

The final room is the Hall of Names. A circular room about 50 feet in diameter has shelves and shelves of binders containing the names of people killed. There are 6,000 numbered binders and thousands more on the lower shelves without numbers.

It is very interesting, but also very draining because of its emotional nature.