On day seven on our trip to Israel, we went to visit Yad Vashem, a museum dedicated to educating on the horrors and history of the Holocaust. It was a solemn day, an experience I will never, ever forget. Even as I write this weeks later, my stomach clenches with the feeling of complete desolation.

The museum is further from the city centre, about 10 stops away from our hostel on the light rail train that runs through the city. As you step off at the Vad Vashem stop, and walk the 5 minutes towards the museum, the thing that strikes you most is the quiet. It is located at the top of a valley of sorts, the sprawl of Jerusalem’s suburbs spread below and tall pines dotting the landscape. You can smell the evergreen scent as you walk through the woods, the only sound is the birds chirping. I felt myself starting to prepare for what I knew would be an afternoon filled with stories of one of history’s most devastating losses of humanity.

We spent the most time on Yad Vashem’s grounds in the museum - wandering through, learning about six years of unimaginable crimes and systematic mass murder. It was so hard to comprehend the scale; the years of blind eyes from around the world; the enormity of the impact and the inter-generational pain it has etched; the ability for humans to commit the kind of atrocities we do to another, for something so small and yet so powerful as what we believe in.

The Hall of Names was the most sobering experience of all. You walk in to a dome of sorts, lined with shelves, shelves filled with binders, binders filled with details of the six million lives of those who were murdered. How can six million lives be reduced to a room of binders, names on a sheet of paper? How can that many names and that many lives be contained in a single room?

One of the things Mel commented on as we walked out of the museum was the minimal focus on Hitler and the Nazi regime. It seemed to be that the focus was on the experience of the Jewish people, on their experiences and losses and hope and resilience, which felt respectful and right, while painful and horrific.

It is difficult to write about an experience such as this, a topic so painful and so personal to so many but I hope I did it justice. If you ever find yourself in Israel, I think this museum is a non-negotiable. You will better understand the history behind Israel’s creation; the fight for the right to existence, to self-determination, to security.

If you’d like to keep reading about our trip throughout the Middle East, check out the post about our trip to Ein Gedi.