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The Valley of the Communities |
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A
massive 2.5-acre monument literally dug out of natural bedrock, the Valley lists
the names and tells the stories of the thousands of Jewish communities that were
destroyed and of the few that suffered yet survived in the shadow of the
Holocaust. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones...and, lo, they were very dry...Thus says the Lord God: Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you in to the land of Yisra'el. (37: 1 and 12) The Valley of the Communities highlights the names of thousands of Jewish communities destroyed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators and the few that suffered but survived in the shadow of the Holocaust. The task of the architects was to create a monument to ruin, an act which required the "con"-struction of "de"-struction. Therefore nothing was built above the ground. The Valley of the Communities was excavated out of the earth. It resembles a concentration of huge open graves gaping in the ground. It is as if what had been built up on the surface of the earth over the course of a millennia - a thousand years of Jewish communal life - was suddenly swallowed up. It is as if a great catastrophe occurred and that rich world which was Jewish life before the Holocaust suddenly disappeared from sight, suddenly sunk out of existence. Seen from the floor of this unique site, the rock walls rise up to a height of some 30 feet or more. Standing there, we feel small, dwarfed by the sheer size of the monument, humbled by our own insignificance and awed by the enormity of what was lost. The Valley itself is a labyrinth of courtyards and walls, of openings and dead ends in which it is intended that visitors will sense some degree of insecurity, of being trapped in a frustrating maze which threatens to collapse upon them, of being caught in a place from which escape is difficult. At the same time we catch glimpses of the "surface" up above our heads, a fleeing look at a plant or a tree growing on the forest "floor" high above. The impression transmitted is that life "up there" goes on - not for the victims who are forever trapped below in the mass graves of the Holocaust, but for those who, through whatever set of fortunate circumstances, lived in Jewish communities which were beyond the reach of the killers. On the glaringly bright white Jerusalem stone walls the names of over 5,000 communities have been engraved - symbolically embedded forever in the very bedrock of Israel. Inside the Valley the visitor is surrounded by names of communities - by letters and rocks and more letters. We are reminded of the famous story of Rabbi Tratyon. When the Romans wanted to punish him for teaching Torah, they wrapped him in the scrolls and set him on fire while still alive (one of the tortures later imitated by the Nazis themselves). His students approached. They asked the rabbi what he sees as he is about to die and Rabbi Tratyon answered: "The parchment burns, but I see the letters. The letters surround me and rises up to the heavens." The names of the communities are engraved on the 107 walls which roughly correspond to the geographic arrangement of the map of Europe and North Africa. The names that appear in Hebrew characters are those commonly used by the Jews themselves whereas those written in Latin characters are the versions popular with the non-Jews on the eve of the Second World War. The different sizes of font used provide an indication to the different sizes of the Jewish communities. The communities are not listed in straight, orderly columns, but appear to have been haphazardly thrown on to the walls. This was done in order to emphasize the disperse nature of the distribution of Jewish communities in the Diaspora, and also to emphasize the individuality and distinctiveness of each. Within the site is "Beit Hakehilot" (literally the House of the Communities) an educational and research center housed in a building donated by Eli Zobrowski, Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, and his wife Diane Zborowski of New York. An 18-minute audio-visual presentation on the role of the community in Jewish life was created for visitors and temporary exhibits on aspects of pre-war Jewish life are also on display. Future plans include the provision of detailed information about each community in print, audio- visual and computerized formats. |
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| Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority |
