Tuesday’s theme was death: Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum), Masada Fortress (site of the Zealot’s mass suicide) and the Dead Sea.
Yad Vashem
After another big breakfast and a fairly easy start, we checked out of Mamilla Hotel (so sad), got on the bus and went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. Due to the nature of tour groups, we only had an hour inside the museum, which was only enough for a taste. Easily I could have spent half a day or more there, not only because of the museum but because it’s a big sprawling complex that covers most of a hill.
We went into the triangle shaped museum, herded along with hundreds of other visitors through a fixed path. The central spine has rooms deviating off to explore different topics like the rise of antisemitism, the rise of the Nazis, the death camps, the ghettos, the slaughters, the resistance, the liberation…on and on it goes.
Because there were so many people in there and we had such little time, it wasn’t possible to look and read everything but as far as interpretation goes, it’s excellent. As far as a personal experience goes, it’s harrowing. It’s relentless. An overload of information, images, videos and objects. I found myself not wanting to go into certain rooms because I didn’t want to see what was next…but then, because we had limited time and the crowd kept going, there was nowhere else to go but forward.
And that was one of the bits of genius about the design of the museum. You are forced to go forward with the crowd… much like the Jews and Romany and homosexuals and everyone else the Nazis rounded up were forced to go forward to their deaths.
One of the other areas that really got to me was the one that focused on the ghettos. There’s a train line that runs through it, down the middle of the cobbled street. Just seeing it gave me chills. And then the way the displays are laid up you force people into crowds, much like the streets were crowded in the videos that were playing. You were just waiting around, keeping busy but nevertheless waiting, milling…stuck.
Another of the rooms, which told the story of the slaughters in Lithuania, was temperature-controlled (or at least noticeably so). The temperature drops to a chill. There’s a pit. It’s quite a stark room. And then you watch the interviews of survivors who fell into the pits with the dead in the middle of the forest. Literally chilling.
There was just so much in there, and so much that I didn’t know. It didn’t shy away from the complicity of nations, or the refusal of nations to accept refugees. It also told stories of hope (or luck, depending on your viewpoint). For instance, 80% of Italian Jews were spared due to delays and refusals to send them off. (I’m not sure if that’s a dark comment on the efficiencies of Italian bureaucracy though).
“Under the circumstances Australia cannot do more…as we have no real racial problem we are not desirous of importing one.” – T W White, Australia’s delegate to the Evian conference
At the end of the triangular spine, you exit the museum to a stunning (and peaceful) view of the Judean Hills, which was welcome relief after such a difficult experience. Which was the point.
Masada Fortress
We left Jerusalem and headed through the West Bank, through endless desert, by the Dead Sea, passing the 9500-year-old city of Jericho, and then out of the West Bank to Masada Fortress.
Masada Fortress is also in the desert. It’s on top of a plateau. We stopped for lunch in the cafe underneath the visitor centre (with ample time for a look around the gift shop…) and then caught the cable car to the top.
Masada Fortress was built by Herod the Great, had a palace on it and a bunch of buildings. Part of it has been restored with a thick black line showing that the stuff below was the original while the stuff above was the new. There’s still not a lot there but enough to get an impression. The bathhouse was the most restored (and provided welcome relief out of the scorching sun).
Most impressive was the ability for this bit of rock in the middle of the desert to have an ample supply of fresh water, collected via aqueducts that fed it into underground cisterns. Many years after Herod, the fortress became the final home of the Zealots. The Romans surrounded it, built a ramp in a couple of days and prepared to flush them out. But the Zealots chose to die rather than surrender (and then presumably die) so committed mass suicide. Grim.
After wandering around in the heat for a while, we returned back via the cable car. It is possible to reach the top walking along what is known as the Snake Track, but you’d have to be mad to do it at this time of year.
Dead Sea Follies
From Masada we went to our hotel by the Dead Sea. The hotel had seen better days, but after staying at Mamilla, anything would have been hard to beat. Some of us were eager for massages but we’d arrived at about 4:30 which didn’t leave enough time to do that AND go and do the tourist thing of covering ourselves with mud and float in the Dead Sea. We chose the tourist option.
We walked down the beach, Simon and I going in first while the others went to buy mud. Floating in the Dead Sea (you can’t really swim) is a bizarre experience. First of all, you don’t want to get your head wet, or put your face in the water at all. The salt level is so high that you’re likely to blind yourself.
Second, any grazes, cuts, abrasions, wounds, sunburn, scratches, mucus membranes are going to sting like a bitch. Within about thirty seconds of getting in, you are suddenly aware of all of them at once. I had a couple on my arms and the back of my neck was burnt. It could have been worse; some of the guys had shaved their balls.
Third, it’s easy to float. You slightly bend your knees, leave back and then you’re floating. It’s a strange sensation but oddly exhilarating. We floated around for a while, feet up, trying to ignore the burning. After that, it was time to get mudded up.
We slopped our mostly pale white bodies with dark brown mud, covering as much flesh as possible. The other guys from the tour group joined us and soon we were all covered, laughing and taking photos and feeling it bake in the sun. The mud was meant to rejuvenate our skin but when it finally came off we mostly felt slick and oily. Perhaps that’s what it was meant to be like.
Photos done, we washed the mud off in the Dead Sea, then, with skin smooth and slightly burning, went for a swim in the hotel pool. Drinks in the bar before dinner and then a buffet with terrible wine before Glen and I head to bed, exhausted after a full day.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BjpjlEVgQ3D/?taken-by=tygerflaem
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?