Day 3

We leave Jerusalem towards the Yad Vashem memorial. After a short drive, we arrive. Unfortunately, we don't have the opportunity to go inside, but we can explore the outdoor area. The disappointment is short-lived as we walk along the paths between the olive trees, which were planted in memory of people who hid or helped Jewish people during the Nazi regime.

After a walk past monuments and trees, we enter a corridor that commemorates the children of the Holocaust. It is a long, dark corridor illuminated by candlelight. The walls are playful, causing the lights to reflect everywhere. A voice reads out the names and ages of the deceased children. We step back into the warmth of the sun and have an incredible view over a valley. This marks the end of the actual exhibition and reminds visitors to look ahead, to the brightness and beauty of life.

After our tour, we meet Ruth. Ruth Berlinger, born in 1931, is a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. She tells us her story of hunger, fear, and violence under the occupation. We sit in a large room on chairs in front of her, and tears flow as she tells her story. She talks about the hunger in the ghetto and the time of escape, the fear in various hiding places. As a child, she cannot understand why these things are happening. How people can do such things to others. About her uncertainty after the war. After the war, she integrated into Sweden. The foreign language she couldn't understand. But then she met her husband, to whom she has been married for seventy years.

A little personal side note from me. I had never had the opportunity to meet a Holocaust survivor in my life, and when I saw Ruth, my tears immediately flowed. Not out of sadness, but out of pure gratitude towards her and the joy of the event. While she sat in front of us, I felt that she was only speaking to me and that she could feel my gratitude towards her. Just these short one and a half hours had already made the whole trip more than worthwhile.

After meeting Ruth Berlinger, we continued with a short break by bus to the Red Canyon. We climbed through beautiful rocks and witnessed a great sunset in the middle of nowhere. Then we continued to Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, where we spent the night in a hostel.