Yad Vashem Seminar June 2009I have returned from Jerusalem refreshed and invigorated. The seminar was intensive, hard work and at times harrowing, but also exciting and stimulating. I had already read quite a lot about the Holocaust, but nothing could have prepared me for the breadth and depth of the knowledge that was offered to us at Yad Vashem.
We learnt first about genocide – how it is defined, in what ways the attempt to exterminate the Jews differed from all other genocides and in what ways it was the same. We learnt about the years that preceded the holocaust: what sorts of people the pre-1930s Jews in Europe were (many and varied); how they related to their Gentile neighbours, the background of Antisemitism, Hitler’s ideology, how he was able to carry a whole nation along with him, and how it gradually developed into a plan for total extermniation.
We learnt about life in the ghettos, about religious life and thinking during the holocaust, about victims, perpetrators, rescuers and bystanders, about non-Jewish victims, about what the churches and the Allies did and did not do, about the development of more and more efficient ways of killing.
We also learnt something about Judaism, what it means to be a Jew, the rabbinical way of thinking, halakhic man, neo-Kantian philosophy; the progress of World War II and especially Operation Barbarossa; something about the Arab-Israeli conflict and ways in which it might be healed; about Christian-Jewish relations; about genocide in Ruanda and Darfur; about the best ways of teaching the holocaust.
Of course we were taken around the museum and the various memorials; and we were privileged to spend time with two survivors.
As well as all this, we attended Friday night worship at a most unusual synagogue, and Sunday morning worship with an Arab congregation in Bethlehem. We became tourists/pilgrims in the Galilee, Bethlehem and the Old City, and visited the Israel Museum.
The teaching was of a very high standard, whether by eminent professors or the resident staff. Everyone knew their subject in great detail, most were involved in research, and all were able to communicate clearly and bring it alive for us.
What have I personally learnt? Or in what ways has the seminar changed my thinking? I now have a much clearer idea of how diverse Judaism is, and what problems Israel faces. I see how important is the ongoing work of putting names, faces and histories to the millions whose deaths went unrecorded. I know a lot more about the scale of the murders and the industrialised methods used, far more horrifying than I ever imagined. I have learnt that it is not enough to have an emotional response to the holocaust, that the horrors of it must be faced and remembered. I see that those who deny that it ever happened and those who wish to continue its work must be opposed at all costs.
And much, much more, still to be sorted through in my mind. I am profoundly grateful to have had this opportunity and I would love to do it all over again.
Pamela Ward
June 28th 2009