I have just returned from my tenth trip to Israel. The country still intrigues me. Whenever I return I am always asked what has impressed me the most.
Of course, there are always the Biblical sites. Who can fail to be moved by standing near where Jesus performed a miracle? Or where some Old Testamentary hero performed a mighty deed?
Then there are the historical places which, while not in the Bible, are the stuff of legend — Masada, the Crusader castles, and the walls of Jerusalem.
The geography is also impressive. Israel has four major climates in a very confined area. I enjoy the Sea of Galilee, Mount Carmel, the Judean Wilderness, the Dead Sea, the mountains, and the coastal plains.
But what never fails to grip me is Yad Veshem, the Holocaust Museum. It is not just a memorial to the six million Jews who were eliminated in Hitler’s demonic genocide. It stands as a warning that, unless we a very careful, it could happen again.
On one of my visits I walked through the exhibits with tears in my eyes. I had seen it all before, but I was moved — yet again.
I came to the last exhibit. There was a German tour group standing behind me. A kindly white-haired grandmother was right by me with her pre-teen granddaughter. Having finished the tour the old lady said the following to her grandchild in broken English (or I never would have understood it)…
“Now, my dear, I have brought you here at your request. You have seen many things today. But please remember, as I have told you before, none of this ever happened. It is all a bunch of lies!”
I was so appalled, so taken aback by what I heard, that I could not respond. I could not trust myself to maintain my composure. I wanted to say something, but I feared that it would ensue into a bitter exchange. But I have never forgotten that women’s revisionist narrative to a girl who is now undoubtedly a women herself.
When I left Yad Veshem last week I bought a book at the museum store about the Nazis. It said in the introduction that the Nazis were not necessarily all bad people. They just gave their right to think for themselves over to one evil man.
The right to think and the responsibility to act should never be given away. We will all one day stand before God. “I was following orders” (or the crowd or the culture) will not suffice as a defense.
Yad Veshem is a monument to history’s most evil chapter. The frightening upshot is that it could happen again — as long as kind white-haired grandmothers tell their receptive granddaughters falsehoods in the name of gentility. And it can happen again as long as bystanders, like me, cannot find our voice or our courage or the words to shout out, “No, no, you are lying!”
Yad Veshem: It may not part of the Bible, but it will be part of the Final Judgment. You can bank on it.
i would pray that God would penetrate through her dishonesty and allow her to admit that she does believe in the holocast,otherwise; why was she at the Museum in the first place.