Thursday, March 15, 2007

Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem

Lest any of us are politically correct enough to believe man has evolved beyond his basic depravity and innate sinful nature, one need only spend a few hours at the stunning new wing of the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, opened in 2005.

There is no way to express the intensity of a first visit there or to comprehend the width and depth of human suffering endured by the Jews under Nazi Germany during World War II. One cannot even begin to take it all in in one visit. Or in several. Or perhaps ever.
Six million Jews were exterminated during those years---nearly the exact number of Jews now living in Israel---a country surrounded today by over 250,000,000 Muslims on all sides in the Middle East.
This Memorial is a small way that we can remind ourselves of the past horrors--and man's capacity for the cruelest of behaviors to his fellow man---and commit to supporting the existence and progress of the Jewish democratic state of Israel today.

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