Today is our last day touring in Israel. Tomorrow, we catch our El Al flight back to Toronto. The group then disperses to their homes that range between Halifax, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Today we left our hotel at 8 am to travel to
Yad Vashem, the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Our guide Etty gave us a general history of the Holocaust and the almost 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis along the "Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations". These are the Gentiles who risked their lives and the lives of their families to rescue Jews. One famous example located where we were standing was Oscar Schindler.
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| Tree planted in honor of Oscar and Emilie Schindler who were responsible for saving 1200 Jews during the Holocaust. |
We also went to see the memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Walking through the memorial, names of individual children who perished were announced. During the time I was there we heard names of children from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Belarus. Photographs of children murdered were also displayed along with displays showing identity cards, clothing with the Star of David on it.
Following this, we entered the large triangular shaped building which held the bulk of the exhibits at Had Vashem. It would have been possible to have stayed there the whole day looking at the descriptions for the exhibits, the photographs, and the videos of footage taken during the Nazi war on the Jews, as well as interviews with survivors. It went into a detailed examination of the period before the Nazis came to power all the way to the settlement of the survivors in Israel following the war. It chronicled the
ill-fated voyage of the German liner, the St. Louis in May 1939 where several countries, including Canada and the U.S., rejected admitting the German Jewish refugees to their countries. Perhaps the most touching was reading the personal stories of people, like us, who were systematically wiped out by the Nazis. It also led to the question, "Would I have done anything to speak out against the lies, the hatred, and the violence against the Jews?" if I had been a German at the time, or a Canadian government official faced with the Jewish refugees on board the St. Louis?
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| A view of Yad Veshem |
Unfortunately, we only had a little more than 90 minutes at the complex. Many of us, or perhaps all of us, could have spent all day at the museum.
Next we traveled through Abu Gosh (an Arab-Israeli town that is home of world famous humus) to
Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant Church (the title in French is Église Notre-Dame-de-l'Arche-d'Alliance) which sits on a hill overlooking most of the town. Fr. John celebrated Mass outdoors overlooking the valley that Abu Gosh sits in.
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| Fr. John celebrating Mass in the shadow of the Church of Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant | |
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Following Mass we view the inside of the actual church. It is the site of the Kyriat Yarim in which the Ark of Covenant resided 20 to 80 years between the period the Philistines returned the ark to Israel and when David retrieved the Ark to bring it to Jerusalem. The church inside was very plain and had little decoration on the walls. The ceiling was a different matter.
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| View from the floor of the church towards the central ceiling vault. |
Have you heard rumors that Elvis still alive? Well, maybe he is and maybe he isn't, but they're certainly keeping the memory of him alive at The Elvis Inn, at Neve Ilan, just a few minutes from Abu Gosh. They serve American-style hamburgers and have a large restaurant all decked out in Elvis memorabilia, and a gift shop selling everything Elvis. We stopped there for lunch and enjoyed the more spacious feel to the restaurant where room wasn't quite as much at a premium as some of the restaurants we visited in more crowded urban areas earlier in our pilgrimage.
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| The Elvis Diner in Neve Ilan |
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| Elvis may be dead, but his memory is alive in this diner. |
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| Yep, Heinz Ketchup for our fries. |
Following our lunch we drove back into Jerusalem and stopped for our last shopping outing at Mamilla Mall just outside the Jaffa Gate, running perpendicular to the Old City wall. It had a wide assortment name of famous brand names. It had some of the feel of the market streets in the Old City but with a much more modern flair and a lot more room.
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| Mamilla Mall outside the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem |
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| Man wearing Orthodox Jewish garb playing a mean version of Hotel California in Hebrew. |
Since tourism is an important industry in Israel, this mall has a cavernous street level area for tour bus parking beneath the stores overhead. It's certainly one way of getting tourists in for a visit.
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| Picture of the bus parking area beneath Mamilla Mall, Jerusalem |
This is our last night in Jerusalem and I must close to put things away and pack.
Good night from Jerusalem.
