'You must go to Yad Vashem. Then you will understand everything about us.'
The words of an Israeli couple we met recently ring in my mind as J and I walk the cool cement corridors of the holocaust memorial museum. The design of the behemoth site overlooking hills and forest, means you have no choice but to walk through every one of the halls, as a snaking corridor weaves you left and right as you read, hear and imagine the terrible lead up to, implementation, and aftermath of one of history's most documented atrocities.
A huge triangular glass window at the far end of the building allows for a few steps of contemplation as you move from one room to another. The over riding sense is one of tranquility and remembrance. Letters, family albums, menorah candlesticks, shoes, stained striped pyjamas, maps, paintings, anti-Jewish propaganda. It's all here.
The synchronicity with the wonderful book I'm reading is chilling: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, given to me years ago by my glorious godmother (thank you Caroline I'm finally reading it). The anti Jewish propaganda in the late 1800s was rife. And we mustn't forget that the horrors of the holocaust began with words. Dr Karl Lueger, a founder of the Christian Social Party writes: 'Jew Baiting is an excellent means for propaganda and getting ahead in politics'. And in 1899, someone in the Viennese Reichstrat calls for bounties for shooting Jews. And this isn't contained to Austria. Much of Europe is creating this kind of propaganda at the time.
The weaving corridor culminates in the hall of remembrance, a dome inlaid with winding rows of documentation and paperwork of those that died, and a pastiche of sepia photographs of faces inlaid like the tiles in the Pantheon. The architect, Moshe Safdie, an Israeli/Canadian, born in Haifa in 1938 (also responsible for Montreal's Habitat 67 and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa) has done a fine job of allowing the information to collide with space and silence. The architecture allows you time, even with dozens of other people about you, to feel it as an individual. The glass, the cement, the views of trees and landscape. No embellishments. This is all there is. The information and the space to think is the priority.
This is a safeguarding of the past like nothing else I've seen in my life.
And two things strike me most: How the smouldering of anti-Semitic feeling and propaganda gathers heat and pace over a relatively short time, and turns into a global wild-fire which damages for ever, an entire race; and the heroism of certain non-Jewish individuals 'righteous among the nations', who are honoured with their own room in the museum, who shelter or save as many as they can, at the greatest risk to their own lives.
And on a national level, countries such as Bulgaria and Denmark are notable examples of heroic national attitude, and the saving of their Jewish populations at the time.
Atrocities through the ages are enabled not only by the seed of evil, but by those along the way who decide to fan the flames, or douse them. This is the most chilling thought: As we watch news clips of the Islamic State tanks rolling through swathes of Iraq and Syria, seemingly no different in their totalitarian confidence than the Nazi tanks, those on the sidelines all have it within them to go one way or the other.
The words 'never again' can feel a little empty in these parts.
J and I walk back through the Jerusalem forest, where the young Arab boy Mohammed Abu Ghdair died after three young Jewish boys pour petrol down his throat and set light to it this summer.
Back home, silence reigns. It's now Thursday and today, officially, we've begun to miss the dwarfs. We've left their latest Lego creations in the playroom as they are, like a shrine to the small forces in our lives. J and I are acheiving many things this week which are less likely with these small and determined forces at home. We sleep continuously each night until 7.30am; live with a half empty fridge without buying milk for a whole week; roam on our feet and never get in the car; play the piano without being unplugged; go running most days and fiddle about with my cameras and lenses, leaving them all over the floor without them being stroked with honey coated fingers.
And they are having a fine time in Jordan with the Glammy according to the daily photo updates I receive. 3 dimensional and everything:
I wander about our area, a little faster than normal, and can stop and chat in a shop without my arms being pulled longer and longer mid conversation towards the door by dwarfs. I find a friendly man in a vegetable shop in Saladin street who is delighted I speak a (tiny amount) of Arabic. Our Eastern pocket of the city is deeply disturbed as no men under 50 have been allowed into Al Aqsa mosque for months, there have been demonstrations every day as the Jewish festival season (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipur and Sukkot) mean that many Muslims have not been allowed entry into the Haram e Sharif where the Al Aqsa mosque stands. And a mosque was torched in the Nablus area this week, by Jewish settlers.
I explore his shop, and find some pomegranates and quinces. I hold out my shopping bag, but he's insistent on giving me one of the ubiquitous and horrible black plastic ones too so I have a bag within a bag. As he packs the exotic fruit, he reminds me of the name for the quince: Safarjan and tells me an Arabic proverb:
'He who learns to speak another language, finds protection amongst its people.'
The words of an Israeli couple we met recently ring in my mind as J and I walk the cool cement corridors of the holocaust memorial museum. The design of the behemoth site overlooking hills and forest, means you have no choice but to walk through every one of the halls, as a snaking corridor weaves you left and right as you read, hear and imagine the terrible lead up to, implementation, and aftermath of one of history's most documented atrocities.
A huge triangular glass window at the far end of the building allows for a few steps of contemplation as you move from one room to another. The over riding sense is one of tranquility and remembrance. Letters, family albums, menorah candlesticks, shoes, stained striped pyjamas, maps, paintings, anti-Jewish propaganda. It's all here.
The synchronicity with the wonderful book I'm reading is chilling: The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, given to me years ago by my glorious godmother (thank you Caroline I'm finally reading it). The anti Jewish propaganda in the late 1800s was rife. And we mustn't forget that the horrors of the holocaust began with words. Dr Karl Lueger, a founder of the Christian Social Party writes: 'Jew Baiting is an excellent means for propaganda and getting ahead in politics'. And in 1899, someone in the Viennese Reichstrat calls for bounties for shooting Jews. And this isn't contained to Austria. Much of Europe is creating this kind of propaganda at the time.
The weaving corridor culminates in the hall of remembrance, a dome inlaid with winding rows of documentation and paperwork of those that died, and a pastiche of sepia photographs of faces inlaid like the tiles in the Pantheon. The architect, Moshe Safdie, an Israeli/Canadian, born in Haifa in 1938 (also responsible for Montreal's Habitat 67 and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa) has done a fine job of allowing the information to collide with space and silence. The architecture allows you time, even with dozens of other people about you, to feel it as an individual. The glass, the cement, the views of trees and landscape. No embellishments. This is all there is. The information and the space to think is the priority.
This is a safeguarding of the past like nothing else I've seen in my life.
And two things strike me most: How the smouldering of anti-Semitic feeling and propaganda gathers heat and pace over a relatively short time, and turns into a global wild-fire which damages for ever, an entire race; and the heroism of certain non-Jewish individuals 'righteous among the nations', who are honoured with their own room in the museum, who shelter or save as many as they can, at the greatest risk to their own lives.
And on a national level, countries such as Bulgaria and Denmark are notable examples of heroic national attitude, and the saving of their Jewish populations at the time.
Atrocities through the ages are enabled not only by the seed of evil, but by those along the way who decide to fan the flames, or douse them. This is the most chilling thought: As we watch news clips of the Islamic State tanks rolling through swathes of Iraq and Syria, seemingly no different in their totalitarian confidence than the Nazi tanks, those on the sidelines all have it within them to go one way or the other.
The words 'never again' can feel a little empty in these parts.
J and I walk back through the Jerusalem forest, where the young Arab boy Mohammed Abu Ghdair died after three young Jewish boys pour petrol down his throat and set light to it this summer.
Back home, silence reigns. It's now Thursday and today, officially, we've begun to miss the dwarfs. We've left their latest Lego creations in the playroom as they are, like a shrine to the small forces in our lives. J and I are acheiving many things this week which are less likely with these small and determined forces at home. We sleep continuously each night until 7.30am; live with a half empty fridge without buying milk for a whole week; roam on our feet and never get in the car; play the piano without being unplugged; go running most days and fiddle about with my cameras and lenses, leaving them all over the floor without them being stroked with honey coated fingers.
And they are having a fine time in Jordan with the Glammy according to the daily photo updates I receive. 3 dimensional and everything:
I wander about our area, a little faster than normal, and can stop and chat in a shop without my arms being pulled longer and longer mid conversation towards the door by dwarfs. I find a friendly man in a vegetable shop in Saladin street who is delighted I speak a (tiny amount) of Arabic. Our Eastern pocket of the city is deeply disturbed as no men under 50 have been allowed into Al Aqsa mosque for months, there have been demonstrations every day as the Jewish festival season (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipur and Sukkot) mean that many Muslims have not been allowed entry into the Haram e Sharif where the Al Aqsa mosque stands. And a mosque was torched in the Nablus area this week, by Jewish settlers.
I explore his shop, and find some pomegranates and quinces. I hold out my shopping bag, but he's insistent on giving me one of the ubiquitous and horrible black plastic ones too so I have a bag within a bag. As he packs the exotic fruit, he reminds me of the name for the quince: Safarjan and tells me an Arabic proverb:
'He who learns to speak another language, finds protection amongst its people.'
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