av8rmike

Today was going to be one of the depressing days on the schedule. Our three groups were visited by Asher Oud, a Holocaust survivor, to listen to his experiences. He was not yet a teenager at the time of the Shoah, so most of his experiences consisted of moving from concentration camp to camp. His parents had been sent off to one of the death camps and he never saw them again. His brother was also separated from him, and he lived at a different camp until it was liberated by the Allies. He was one of the first wave of settlers to the newly independent state of Israel in the late '40s. In a happy ending, Oud and his brother were reunited when the former learned his brother had somehow survived and was still living in Eastern Europe, having not even told his family he had a brother. The whole thing was remarkable, not just the story itself, but in the fact that it was coming directly from someone who was there, which is becoming all too rare these days.

Continuing in the same vein, the next location was יד ושם (Yad VaShem), Israel's National Holocaust Memorial. It's a much bigger facility than the museum in Washington DC, more of a park than a museum, but the latter has more of a visceral, emotional impact. We started off in the Valley of the Communities, a memorial to the small towns in Poland and Eastern Europe that were completely wiped out during the Shoah. We continued along to the Garden of the Righteous among Nations, a memorial to those non-Jews that provided aid to Jews at considerable risk to themselves. Inside the museum itself, there is an exhibit of art produced inside the ghettos, and a hall of records where one can search for any relatives that might have been lost. We ate lunch at the museum's cafeteria, and I sat with a few Israeli Army soldiers. One of the younger people on our bus, Steve, was talking with them about life in the army. I think he'd decided to emigrate while taking a break from college. If he does, I wish him all the best.

Back on the bus, this time for יד אליעזר (Yad Eliezer), a sort of Meals-on-Wheels-type charity in Jerusalem. We were there to pack boxes of foodstuffs, which we did in fireman-style competition between the genders. It turned out to be a lot of fun, especially with the guys soundly trouncing the ladies. In the process, we packed something like 150 boxes in an hour, which made the volunteers there very happy.

The final stop for the afternoon was Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, the equivalent of Washington's Arlington National Cemetery. Many of the soldiers killed in the different wars and skirmishes are buried there, under large stone markers and grass beds. Several Prime Ministers are buried there, most notably Golda Meir, the first woman Prime Minister. The tomb of Yitzhak Rabin, the P.M. who was assassinated in November of 1995, is reminiscent of JFK's tomb in Arlington. complete with eternal flame and massive stone markers. At the very top of Mount Herzl, in a huge open plaza with seating and shell, is the tomb of Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. It seems like a huge waste of space for such a small monument, but that's the way it's set up. One of the girls in our group had a cousin buried in the cemetery, so we set out to look for it. We found it in the section for more recent deaths, some as recent as last November.

Of course, soon it was time to leave and head back for dinner. Everyone was unclear what the after-dinner program was; it turned out to be a "Whose Line"/improv set of games led by what I think was a local Israeli troupe. It was pretty funny and nearly everyone took part, but I didn't really because some of my group was mixed in with the west coast bus and some didn't really feel the need to bond with them. When I got back to my room, I turned on my cell phone to IM