By: Jared Schorr
The time is going by too quickly! The 8th day has approached us. This morning we went to Yad VaShem. This is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. It is interestingly set up. When you walk in, it appears you can see the exit and just kind of peek into the different room cut outs on each side. That is incorrect. The purpose of this was to let us know that the end of the Holocaust was not near back when it happened. The museum is the largest in the world in terms of the amount of artifacts it has. Every room was filled with anything and everything from the time of the Holocaust including notes, prayer books, shoes, and even Nazi propaganda. The two things that struck me the most was an artist's clay model of what the gas chambers were to have looked like and the last room that was a rotunda with a wishing well in the middle. Around us was 4.5 million headstones of those that perished in the Holocaust all on bookshelves. About 1/4 of the shelves were empty, still waiting for more names to be verified. Our tour guide noted that it is impossible to know all 6 million that were murdered. There was also a separate memorial for children that were perished and it was a dark room with candles and a loud speaker that read off names of children and their age; some as young as 1 year old.
On a lighter note, we went caving! We were literally crawling on our hands and knees through the smallest of crevices and holes to make it out on the other side. There were places inside to stand up and stretch, but it was very intricate to figure out which was I wanted to go in the whole, whether it was feet first, head first, on my back, on my stomach. I was not getting stuck! I did manage to make it out unscathed!
We then made our way to the edge of the Negev desert in the South of the state of Israel and spent the night on a kibbutz. We were all thinking we were going to be in the middle of nowhere with no civilization. We were quite wrong! I stayed in a nice cabin, probably one of the nicest places on this trip aside from the Crown Plaza in Jerusalem.
I couldn't be happier to be on this trip and I'm glad to have made all of these friends that I have never had before. The experience is one-of-a-kind that will never be forgotten..
The time is going by too quickly! The 8th day has approached us. This morning we went to Yad VaShem. This is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. It is interestingly set up. When you walk in, it appears you can see the exit and just kind of peek into the different room cut outs on each side. That is incorrect. The purpose of this was to let us know that the end of the Holocaust was not near back when it happened. The museum is the largest in the world in terms of the amount of artifacts it has. Every room was filled with anything and everything from the time of the Holocaust including notes, prayer books, shoes, and even Nazi propaganda. The two things that struck me the most was an artist's clay model of what the gas chambers were to have looked like and the last room that was a rotunda with a wishing well in the middle. Around us was 4.5 million headstones of those that perished in the Holocaust all on bookshelves. About 1/4 of the shelves were empty, still waiting for more names to be verified. Our tour guide noted that it is impossible to know all 6 million that were murdered. There was also a separate memorial for children that were perished and it was a dark room with candles and a loud speaker that read off names of children and their age; some as young as 1 year old.
On a lighter note, we went caving! We were literally crawling on our hands and knees through the smallest of crevices and holes to make it out on the other side. There were places inside to stand up and stretch, but it was very intricate to figure out which was I wanted to go in the whole, whether it was feet first, head first, on my back, on my stomach. I was not getting stuck! I did manage to make it out unscathed!
We then made our way to the edge of the Negev desert in the South of the state of Israel and spent the night on a kibbutz. We were all thinking we were going to be in the middle of nowhere with no civilization. We were quite wrong! I stayed in a nice cabin, probably one of the nicest places on this trip aside from the Crown Plaza in Jerusalem.
I couldn't be happier to be on this trip and I'm glad to have made all of these friends that I have never had before. The experience is one-of-a-kind that will never be forgotten..