Been there in 1990. For me – a devastating day.
A jewish Facebook friend asked me to explain my pic.
My answer:
Though I heard a lot about the Shoah at school and read a lot about it back then, there will always be huge gap between rational knowledge and personal experience.
My day at Yad Yashem in ’90 surely did not amount to something like personal experience, but though, it was a devastating experience.
After all, maybe it wasn’t the memorial alone which made me more than sad, it was the combination of the Kinnereth’s man’s Auschwitz and Theresienstadt story, then the story and the KZ number on the forearm of the old barber in a Jerusalem hair saloon who despite of all ensured me in jiddish ~ keen Sorg mein Jung ich mach Dir a scheene Frisur (don’t worry young man I’ll provide you a decent cut).
I envy all who are still able to see anything ‘positive’ in all this, e.g. gods scorn or devils work or alike.
There just have been too many massacres in the history of mankind (GULAG, Khmer Rouge, American Indians, Ruanda et.al.) to believe in any kind of a well-meaning g-d.
It’s all about struggle. But this is another story.
— Schlesinger
Photo: Cafe Tel Aviv (CC Lizenz, bei vollständiger Nennung dieses Blogs und Verlinkung)