Yad Vashem

Secretary of State James A. Baker III visited Israel for thefirst time last month. It must have been a revelation to him -- especially the searing experience of Yad Vashem (literally ''a monument and a name''), the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. It is a national shrine visited by more than a million people each year.It must not have been easy for an American who has led a comparatively sheltered life, whose home, church and office have never been smashed and burned, who has never had to watch his children grabbed and murdered by brown-shirted savages, whose family members have died peacefully in beds instead of in ovens, to grasp the enormity of the horror inflicted on European Jewry by the Nazi bestiality which preceded birth of the State of Israel.

Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to the Holy Land veered into controversy over his past on Tuesday when the Vatican denied and then acknowledged his membership in the Hitler Youth during World War II. The conflicting accounts came in response to criticism by Israeli leaders that the German pontiff's address at the Holocaust Memorial on Monday had failed to acknowledge his witness of Nazi terror as a conscript in the youth movement and the German army....

JERUSALEM - The building is a tunnel carved through Mount Herzl, opening onto a breathtaking vista that will bring visitors from darkness into light. That will be the path of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, when its new, largely underground headquarters opens early next year, part of a larger makeover of Holocaust museums. Their curators are seeking to make the events of two generations ago relevant to people for whom the murder of 6 million Jews is more distant history than a felt part of life.

FOR ANYONE encountering the Holocaust, the black-and-white photographs of ghettos, concentration camps and crematoriums stand out. For those who didn't live through the war, it's the images - more than history books - that have conveyed the story of the systematic destruction of European Jewry. But as these photographs have been displayed again and again, a sense of immediacy has been lost. Jews in the Krakow ghetto awaiting deportation, emaciated survivors in a camp barracks, smoke spewing into the skies over Auschwitz - these photos you have seen, this tableau you recognize.

Kosso Eloul, 75, an internationally acclaimed sculptor who designed the eternal flame at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, died Wednesday in Toronto, his home since 1964.He earned an international reputation with such works as a prize-winning piece in Japan, a sculpture that graces the Canadian Embassy in Beijing and a monument in Mexico City. But perhaps the most important sculpture by Mr. Eloul is the eternal flame at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, the memorial to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Like some other countries in Eastern Europe, Romania has had difficulties confronting its past. In World War II, it was led by Ion Antonescu, who struck an alliance with Nazi Germany. After the war, Romania fell under the dominance of the Soviet Union. Today, Romania is trying to take on democracy, an evolution accompanied by a rejection of communism - and sometimes by an attempt to embrace Antonescu, who was an anti-communist. This deference toward Antonescu perhaps helped create an atmosphere in which the Romanian information agency earlier this month found itself able to deny that a Holocaust had occurred in the country.

FOR ANYONE encountering the Holocaust, the black-and-white photographs of ghettos, concentration camps and crematoriums stand out. For those who didn't live through the war, it's the images - more than history books - that have conveyed the story of the systematic destruction of European Jewry. But as these photographs have been displayed again and again, a sense of immediacy has been lost. Jews in the Krakow ghetto awaiting deportation, emaciated survivors in a camp barracks, smoke spewing into the skies over Auschwitz - these photos you have seen, this tableau you recognize.

Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to the Holy Land veered into controversy over his past on Tuesday when the Vatican denied and then acknowledged his membership in the Hitler Youth during World War II. The conflicting accounts came in response to criticism by Israeli leaders that the German pontiff's address at the Holocaust Memorial on Monday had failed to acknowledge his witness of Nazi terror as a conscript in the youth movement and the German army....

JERUSALEM -- Soon after the outbreak of World War II, a 13-year-old Parisian youth named Aaron Lustiger converted from Judaism to Catholicism.This week, that long-ago choice brought scathing criticism from Israel's chief rabbi, and the rabbi's rebuke has tainted with controversy tomorrow's Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.Aaron Lustiger is now Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris and said by some to be a contender for pope.Israel's chief rabbi, Yisrael Lau, said this week that the Catholic official is a traitor who deserves condemnation.

JERUSALEM -- Crossing a new threshold of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, Pope John Paul II paid an emotional visit yesterday to Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, saying the Roman Catholic Church was "deeply saddened" by anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution committed by Christians. The pope did not fulfill the hopes of some Jews that he would specifically attach blame to the church or to Pope Pius XII, the pope during World War II, for failing to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening.

JERUSALEM - More than 40 heads of state and ministers, many of them from Europe, gathered here in the chill yesterday evening for the opening of a new Holocaust history museum at Yad Vashem, the Israeli guardian of the Holocaust and its history. More than 10 years in the making, the new museum tries to tell the story of the 6 million Jewish dead, the names of half of them still unknown, through the diaries, photographs, experiences and testimonies of about 100 individuals. Rather than the dry history and emphasis on photographs of the old museum, the new one relies on more modern techniques of film and recreation of reality through artifacts, concentrating on the stories of individuals caught up in the horror of a previously unimaginable world.

JERUSALEM - The building is a tunnel carved through Mount Herzl, opening onto a breathtaking vista that will bring visitors from darkness into light. That will be the path of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, when its new, largely underground headquarters opens early next year, part of a larger makeover of Holocaust museums. Their curators are seeking to make the events of two generations ago relevant to people for whom the murder of 6 million Jews is more distant history than a felt part of life.

Like some other countries in Eastern Europe, Romania has had difficulties confronting its past. In World War II, it was led by Ion Antonescu, who struck an alliance with Nazi Germany. After the war, Romania fell under the dominance of the Soviet Union. Today, Romania is trying to take on democracy, an evolution accompanied by a rejection of communism - and sometimes by an attempt to embrace Antonescu, who was an anti-communist. This deference toward Antonescu perhaps helped create an atmosphere in which the Romanian information agency earlier this month found itself able to deny that a Holocaust had occurred in the country.

JERUSALEM -- Crossing a new threshold of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, Pope John Paul II paid an emotional visit yesterday to Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, saying the Roman Catholic Church was "deeply saddened" by anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution committed by Christians. The pope did not fulfill the hopes of some Jews that he would specifically attach blame to the church or to Pope Pius XII, the pope during World War II, for failing to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening.

JERUSALEM -- Pope John Paul II begins an historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land today with a heavy task of soothing the poor in spirit in a region perpetually torn by conflict. The pontiff's seven-day visit to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories fulfills his longtime dream of praying in the cradle of Christianity 2,000 years after Jesus was born. But from the moment he lands, Pope John Paul II will face pressures from Christians, Muslims and Jews, all smarting from past and present injustices.

Kosso Eloul, 75, an internationally acclaimed sculptor who designed the eternal flame at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, died Wednesday in Toronto, his home since 1964.He earned an international reputation with such works as a prize-winning piece in Japan, a sculpture that graces the Canadian Embassy in Beijing and a monument in Mexico City. But perhaps the most important sculpture by Mr. Eloul is the eternal flame at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, the memorial to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

JERUSALEM - More than 40 heads of state and ministers, many of them from Europe, gathered here in the chill yesterday evening for the opening of a new Holocaust history museum at Yad Vashem, the Israeli guardian of the Holocaust and its history. More than 10 years in the making, the new museum tries to tell the story of the 6 million Jewish dead, the names of half of them still unknown, through the diaries, photographs, experiences and testimonies of about 100 individuals. Rather than the dry history and emphasis on photographs of the old museum, the new one relies on more modern techniques of film and recreation of reality through artifacts, concentrating on the stories of individuals caught up in the horror of a previously unimaginable world.

JERUSALEM -- Manfred Klafter was arrested by the Nazis and was on his way to the Auschwitz concentration camp when he escaped. Eighty of his relatives died in the Holocaust.But he has little time for Holocaust memorials: "Too much is being spent on commemoration, and not enough on the living," said Mr. Klafter, who now heads a group in Israel offering counseling to Holocaust survivors.The memory of the Holocaust does not rest peacefully in Israel. In the one country where universal agreement about the Holocaust and its lessons might be expected, there remains a national unease about it.Even as those who lived through the Nazi horror grow old and their numbers become inevitably smaller, debate over how to keep the memory alive -- and for what purposes -- remains raw and painful.

JERUSALEM -- Soon after the outbreak of World War II, a 13-year-old Parisian youth named Aaron Lustiger converted from Judaism to Catholicism.This week, that long-ago choice brought scathing criticism from Israel's chief rabbi, and the rabbi's rebuke has tainted with controversy tomorrow's Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.Aaron Lustiger is now Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris and said by some to be a contender for pope.Israel's chief rabbi, Yisrael Lau, said this week that the Catholic official is a traitor who deserves condemnation.

JERUSALEM -- Manfred Klafter was arrested by the Nazis and was on his way to the Auschwitz concentration camp when he escaped. Eighty of his relatives died in the Holocaust.But he has little time for Holocaust memorials: "Too much is being spent on commemoration, and not enough on the living," said Mr. Klafter, who now heads a group in Israel offering counseling to Holocaust survivors.The memory of the Holocaust does not rest peacefully in Israel. In the one country where universal agreement about the Holocaust and its lessons might be expected, there remains a national unease about it.Even as those who lived through the Nazi horror grow old and their numbers become inevitably smaller, debate over how to keep the memory alive -- and for what purposes -- remains raw and painful.