Yad Vashem

Today I went to see the new exhibition hall at Yad Vashem. It is incredible and definitely worth checking out. It is shaped like a triangular prism and forms a bridge through the end of the museum's campus. When you enter you see a screen showing a video of life before the war... of children learning in cheder and men going to shul. Then you proceed through a criss-cross series of exhibits that go through the rise of the Nazis and deportation of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. Throughout the entire hall you hear a combination of eerie sounds but also of survivors telling their stories on video screens in each exhibit. The combination of pictures and artifacts with firsthand accounts make each section extremely powerful. The final section has a video of children singing Hatikvah in Israel, and of Ben Gurion announcing Israel's independence. When you exit the hall, this is what you see: Could they even have imagined this?
As I stood looking across the valley and out to Mevaseret, I pulled my teudat zehut out of my bag and realized how incredible it is that I had in my hand an official document that I am a citizen in the State of Israel. Six million Jews who barely had this as a dream....