Day 37 - Yad Vashem

So you are probably wondering what Yad Vashem actually is. Well, it is the Jewish holocaust museum.   Unlike other holocaust museums that you may have been to, this museum focuses less on the horrible things that happened during this time (though they certainly did not gloss over them), but the main point of this museum is to help you to remember. They see that it is more important to remember that each one of the people that died during this time had a name, had a life, and had a family. Each one was special in their own way, and we should never forget what happened.

Walking through the museum, we weren't allowed to take pictures so I took notes and I drew little sketches, but really, I can not say much about it. It's surreal to realize that because of a person's desire to  be as God and for his desire to become the most powerful, perfect person in the world, an entire people were wiped out from the earth. 

The murders in this war were so many and so horrible that even Himmler (the biggest mass murderer of all time) fainted when one of the bodies that had been shot dead bursted a blood vessel and spurted blood all over Himmler. At that point in the war, they decided that just shooting people, throwing them in a huge ditch, and then covering it with dirt was not a very effective way to kill people. At that time they resorted to mass industrialized murder. Think about that phrase for a second. Mass means that the killing was not limited to a small area but was spread everywhere. Industrialized means that they used the same process to kill people as Henry Ford used to build cars! They had a system that was so set out that thousands of people were involved in the killings without even having to shoot a gun. Because of that, many people thought that they were "innocent" of murdering hundreds of thousands of people when in reality they were guilty of that very thing. Then, of course, murder is murder. Thousands upon Thousands and even millions of Jews were murdered during this horrible time... Why weren't more saved? Why aren't there more Christians that helped these people? It is because they were scared. How often are you scared to do the right thing just because the process may not be very comfortable. Christians, don't forget. Don't be scared to do the right thing. Be bold and do what God is calling you to. 

See that tree that I'm standing next to in that picture? That tree is planted in memory of Corrie Ten Boom. She and her family dedicated their lives to saving Jews from the holocaust. All of them ended up in a concentration camp, and her sister and father died there. By the grace of God, Corrie survived the camp until the end of the war, and then she traveled around the world sharing the gospel with everyone, even her old prison guards that had abused her during the war. God gave her the strength to forgive her old enemies. Because of how she served the Lord and was used by Him so mightily during her life time, Corrie Ten Boom is one of my heroes. I love her very much, and I want to be used of the Lord as much as she was! :) 

Love,

V