Yad Vashem - Museum of the Shoah (Holocaust). Shoah - the so-called Holocaust in Hebrew, mass murder of Jews by Hitler's regime. Six million European Jews were shot, burned, strangled gas have died from torture, starvation and disease in the camps. The memorial complex Yad Vashem is intended to keep the memory of their names - no wonder its name means "memory and name," or "place name". These are the words of the Old Testament: "... so will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off "(Isaiah 56: 5).

The fact that the names of the dead not be cut off, and those who risked their lives to save Jews, began to think more in the war. In 1948, on Mount Zion was founded the first Holocaust museum, and in 1957 opened Yad Vashem.

Within its territory is very difficult, in a historic building, even grown men cry. When planning a visit to the memorial, it is better to take a day: study takes several hours, and then it is impossible to switch to something entertaining.

On 18 acres located Valley devastated communities, Children's Memorial, Wall of Remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Hall ... cattle trucks in which Jews were sent to labor camps, symbolic stopped on the tracks in front of the cliff. Janusz Korczak Monument shows the famous Polish writer and teacher with his wards orphans - he went with them to a concentration camp, although he could be saved. Synagogue saves storage cabinets of the Torah and other items, the saved from the Nazis destroyed synagogues in Europe.

The memorial complex includes a video and training centers, archives, libraries, the International Research Institute for Holocaust Art Museum, which collected thousands of works created in the ghettos and camps. A special unit has been the righteous people of the world - a title awarded to non-Jews to save Jews during the Holocaust. In honor of the heroes planted trees registered in the Valley and the Garden of the Righteous. Their number is not determined definitively, the museum continues to receive information about cases of salvation.

An important objective of Yad Vashem - the Holocaust personalize, show that there were six million individual murders. This idea embodies the main building of the complex - Historical Museum, which opened in 2005. Its unusual design created by renowned architect Moshe Safdie. Concrete building area of ​​4,200 square meters looks like a two hundred meter length of boom - it pierces Mount of Remembrance, on which the Yad Vashem. In the underground passage history of genocide of the Jews is shown in chronological order - through thousands of personal belongings of the victims and survivors, documents, letters, films. In the center of the Hall of Names at the end of the corridor - more than 600 photographs of the victims.

Shocked visitors past the path of terror, fall into the "tail" of the building-boom. There's a viewing platform with a beautiful view of the mountains and the modern Jerusalem: light, space, life that goes on, no matter what.