Holocaust Museum - Jerusalem

Holocaust Museum - Jerusalem

My impression of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Israel is somewhat tempered by my prior visits to the Holocaust Museum in Dachau, Germany and the Holocaust Museum near Auschwitz, Poland. The Holocaust Museum in Dachau did the best job of teaching about Nazism and the Holocaust, while the Holocaust Museum near Auschwitz, Poland wasn't a museum per se, but rather the ruins of the massive concentration camp where over a million Jews were murdered.

As Holocaust museum experiences go, even Israel can't compare with Auschwitz, where I spent an afternoon walking around by myself. I'll never forget the pond in the middle of the camp. From afar, it seemed to move, so I approached for a closer look. What was moving were thousands, perhaps millions of frogs. The Nazis had dumped the ashes of the burnt corpses in the pond and the frogs were still feeding on the nutrients from a million human bodies. I felt the presence of pure evil and left there in a hurry, utterly revolted by the magnitude of the evil that people - brainwashed or not - had been capable.

Anyway, let's get back to Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Above is one of its exhibits. A sadistic Nazi officer apparently ordered a Jewish tailor to make him a shirt from pages of the Torah, which would have to be desecrated. The tailor had the last word, however, as he only used verses that speak of curses.

Travel Tip
The museum is outside the Zion Gate and is tricky to find. You may run into men sitting by their doorways who offer to take you to the museum if you take a moment to step through their doorways and sign their guest book. If you do that, they'll ask you for money, so just keep walking. The museum is about 50 yards from them, and the cashiers at this "free" site will ask you to donate anyway once you get there.