The Valley of the Communities

Today at Yad Vashem we had lectures on how to implement Holocaust teaching in the classroom through art and lectures on life in the Warsaw ghetto. We were then taken on a tour through the Valley of the Communities. The valley is a 2.5 acre monument which has been dug out of natural bedrock. Over 5000 names of communities are engraved on the stone walls in the Valley of the Communities. Each name recalls a Jewish community which existed for hundreds of years. The valley was excavated out of the earth and nothing was built above ground. The names of the communities are engraved on the 107 walls which roughly corresponds to the geographic arrangement of the map of Europe and North America.

The inscription at the entrance to the memorial is as follows:

"This memorial commemorates the Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and the few which suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust. For more than one thousand years, Jews lived in Europe, organizing communities to preserve their distinct identity. In periods of relative tranquility, Jewish culture flourished, but in periods of unrest, Jews were forced to flee. Wherever they settled, they endowed the people amongst whom they lived with their talents. Here their stories will be told.."

Following are some photos of the monument.

The smooth concrete walls have the inscriptions on them throughout the monument.

These pictures are of the view as you are looking over the valley.

In 1995 Yad Vashem was gifted an original German cattle car on it's iron tracks by the Polish authorities. This was so that Yad Vashem could create a permanent Memorial to the Deportees.This cattle car, which was used to deport Jews to the extermination camps, is balancing precariously at the edge of the track, symbolizing the journey towards annihilation. Just as the view at the end of the Holocaust Museum symbolised hope, this memorial also faces over the hills of Jerusalem conveying the idea of eternal hope and renewal of life after the Holocaust.  

Tomorrow is another day at school but if it is lovely and sunny like it was today I am going to try and walk up Mt Hertzl. In the evening we are going on a guided tour of the Israeli museum. On Wednesday we have a whole day with four survivors listening to their stories and then working in small workshop groups with them.