Goodbye Israel!

Today was the final day at the University. We still had a full day of lectures and they were all fantastic. I have to write again about the calibre of the Professors that are lecturing us. They are all world class in their fields and it is so amazing that Gandel Philanthropy and Yad Vashem has given us this opportunity to come to Israel and learn from these people and experience the country for 3 weeks. We had lectures today on Muslim Antisemitism and the Global Jihad, Current Issues in Holocaust Education in an Age of Genocide, Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals and The World after Auschwitz. It was such interesting content. We then had a final debrief before piling back on to the bus and returning to the hotel.

My day started well. When I first arrived my first breakfast was waffles with maple syrup. I had never eaten waffles before but they never made a reappearance after that. I had the same thing every morning from then on, plain yoghurt, grated apple and granola and a cup of tea. Every now and then I asked the chef who made the omelettes if there would be waffles again and he always said 'no'. This morning I got to breakfast at 6.30am with the early crew and made my yoghurt and cup of tea and then, low and behold, the chef brought me a big plate of waffles with maple syrup. I was so happy that my friend had to take a photo because she had never seen such a happy face in the morning. Then to top it off my Mum and Dad rang me :)

At school today I went for a work along the Avenue of the Righteous and took a photo of the tree that Oskar Schindler and his wife Emily planted in 1962.

The next photo is one of the tree planted to commemorate another Righteous Gentile, Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman , diplomat and humanitarian who saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from the Nazis. I included this photo because my scholarship was awarded in the name of Raoul Wallenberg.

Following are just a few photos of the University that has practically been my home for the last 3 weeks. It is an amazing place.

We all met in the dining room tonight to have a quick dinner together and then out to the mezzanine to have a farewell drink before we all head in different directions tomorrow. Some of us heading home and others continuing travels before school goes back. Below is a photo of Tess, Barb and myself, three members of the 10 strong Melbourne crew. As you can see a stubby of Israeli beer is about as big as my head.

Tomorrow several of us leave the hotel at 8am to head to the airport. We are all on the same Cathay flight out so I will have plenty of company at the airport.

Oskar Schindler

The second last day at school today. We had lectures about Holocaust Denial and the Righteous Among the Nations. We then met a survivor, Eva Lavi, who was one of Oskar Schindler's Jews. We were given a copy of the list and Eva and her mother were numbers 201 and 202 on the list. Eva was only a small child then so her maiden name was Rats. Her mother's name was Fela.

 

You can't see the next column in the photo but it is a birthdate column. Eva was only 6 at the time so Schindler changed the dates of the young children to an age that would mean they could work and the older people would get a reduced age so they also would appear valuable. This ability to be useful meant that the Nazi's simply wouldn't dispose of them on the spot. We went to Mount Zion in Jerusalem with Eva and visited Oskar Schindler's grave. It is an unassuming grave site in a small cemetery. The cemetery, however, is fortified with barbed wire surrounding its walls and remains behind locked gates that were opened for us by a guard.

The view over Jerusalem from the cemetery.

The next photo is Oskar Schindler's grave. The stones are put on the grave as a mark of respect by visitors. In Jewish custom stones have a sense of permanence, unlike flowers that will eventually wither and die. Stones last for eternity. This is why we see Schindler's Jews laying stones on his grave at the end of Spielberg's movie. We were told that the authorities continue to remove the stones but they are always replaced by visitors to the gravesite. Eva told us that when the Russians liberated them at the end of the war she was 8 years old and she picked a few flowers and gave them to him as he sat on his white horse. He picked her up and sat her on his lap on his horse. She said that her mother was a tiny, fragile and young looking woman but spoke her mind and when Spielberg premiered the movie he had all of Schindler's Jews there to see it screened for the first time. Eva said her mother and father thought he did a very good job but her mother went up to Spielberg afterwards and said "you could have made the movie better if you had included a scene where my daughter gave the Russian on the white horse the flowers."

A photo with Eva. When our host Ephraim asked her to say something about Schindler she started to cry and said "I loved him. He was my angel of mercy".

She told us many stories of how she and her parents came to work in Oskar Schindler's ammunition factory and what her life was like in Auschwitz under Nazi occupation. We have heard so many survivor stories throughout this trip and their continued humanity amidst such horrific experiences amazes me each time.

Eva has been invited to speak at the United Nations next year and tell her story.

Tomorrow is our last day at school. I have checked in to my flight on-line and booked my Sherut to take me to the airport on Thursday. Only two more sleeps until home time.

Farewell Dinner

Not a lot to blog about today. We had a morning of lectures at Yad Vashem on Australian Responses to the Holocaust and The Phenomena of New anti-Semitism. I thought I might just post a few new photos.

Here are two new photos of the intrepid Snake Path climbers at Masada.

This one is of the group on top of the mountain known as 'The Star of Jordan' where we visited the 12th Century Crusader Castle Belvoir.

The following photos are the ones that my friend took with her high power camera. You can see right into Syria and the decimation of the villages and buildings.

After school today the Yad Vashem staff took us out for a fully paid for dinner including Israeli wine and it turned out to also be  a Graduation Ceremony. Following are photos of the yummy dinner. Eating is a very communal affair here and everyone just tucks in to the same central serving plate.

Grilled capsicum and zucchini with olive oil.

Tortilla with egg, tomato and rocket.

Freshly baked Turkish bread with eggplant and tahini dip and salmon portions with sesame.

Lots of different salad choices.

Red wine.

Lamb and sweet potato mash and paprika potatoes.

Grilled chicken, curried sausages and rissoles.

 Little chocolate puddings with an assortment of vanilla ice-cream and gelato.

My little chocolate pudding.

After dinner we had a couple of spokespeople from our group present our hosts/lecturers with cards, flowers and wine and then they presented us with our Graduation Packs. I graduated!!!

This photo was taken outside of our classroom at the beginning of the seminar and it was also in our Graduation  Pack.

We still have two more days of the seminar to go and tomorrow we have one of the survivors from Oscar Schindler's list coming to give us her testimony and then we are heading to the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion to visit Schindler's grave.

The Jordon Valley, Sea of Galilee and the borders of Lebanon and Syria.

Today we had a 13 hour day of touring. We began at our hotel and headed north through the Judean Desert and then onto the Jordon Valley. As we got deeper into the valley the land became a lot more fertile and we saw bananas, dates, grapes and figs growing. Israel exports all of these products with their neighbours and our guide told us that they just don't mark it as 'grown in Israel' so their hostile neighbours buy it. Today was the only day of the trip that we had armed soldiers come through our bus and check us but they did so with a smile. I have experienced nothing but friendly and kind people in this country.

We began our tour by travelling up a mountain known as 'The Star of Jordan' where we visited a 12th century Crusader Castle called Belvoir. The background of this photo is the view from all directions at the top of these ruins.

We then headed down past the Sea of Galilee toward our lunch destination, the Kubbutz Ein Gev fish restaurant. The meal was delicious and was really very much like the kind of food we eat back home. They eat well in this country.

Lunch started with pita, hummus, pickled cauliflower, a chunky garlic, onion and capsicum dip and a cucumber and tomato salad.

Then lentil soup.

Then a whole baked fish with lemon. Delicious!!!!

After lunch we went to the border of Jordon and Israel. Jordan and Israel share a very good relationship and the high volt electrified fence that runs along the entire border is not to stop Jordanians from entering so much as Hezbollah and ISIS.

The small yellow fort that you can see on the hill in the next photo is also the same fort in the first of these photos. A Jordanian soldier is in this fort at all times and his job is to identify and stop anybody who is trying to cross into Israel.

The following two photos show how lush the landscape is throughout the Jordan Valley.

My favourite part of the whole day was heading up to the Israeli border with Syria and Lebanon. It looked peaceful but my friend had a really good camera that could zoom right in on the landscape and sadly it is just decimated. I'll have these photos when I get back to Australia. As you get closer to Syria you start to see ruined buildings.

The landscape becomes a lot more desolate as well.

This photo is Syria.

 This is Lebanon.

This is the Israel active military position overlooking the borders. It's hard to see the tanks in the photo but they are all lined up across the mountain range.

As we got closer to the borders there was also a greater UN presence. I've never seen a UN car except for on the news.

Tomorrow it is back to the classroom and then tomorrow night we are having our farewell dinner at a South American restaurant.