ISRAEL 9 2009: Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial campus

1-Map of Yad Vashem campus in West Jerusalem, courtesy Google. The new Holocaust History museum is the largest Holocaust museum in the world. It is carved into the Mount of Remembrance and tells the story of the European Jewish community during the Holocaust.

2-Satellite image, Yad Vashem, courtesy Google (same scale as map).

3-Floor plan, Holocaust History Museum. The museum—180 meters (190 ft) long—cuts directly through the Har Hazikaron mountainside. Visitors enter at grade, proceed into the mountain to the lowest underground point in the center of the museum, then upward to the exit. Low transition barriers give an overview of the exhibition in the next gallery and direct the traffic (in the letter order shown).

4-Entry to museum, at SE end of building

5-Spine of the main hall of the Holocaust History Museum: looking back (SE) and downward from the exit, toward the entry. The walls are reinforced concrete. The skylight protrudes through the mountaintop.

6-An outdoor walkway cuts through the museum at its midpoint, over the heads of the museum goers below.

7-Looking toward NW exit, at midpoint of the museum, from an outside walkway that crosses through the building over the heads of the museum goers.

8-NW end of the spine of the Holocaust History Museum—exit and bridge

9-This bridge leads from the exit of the Holocaust History Museum to the courtyard and to the remainder of the campus.

10-Exit from the Holocaust History Museum

11-The courtyard: exit from main hall is straight ahead; the wall on the right is the art museum. At this point the visitor has passed through 10 exhibition halls, each devoted to a different chapter in the history of the Holocaust, and comes out into the daylight.

12-NW end of the building. In the distance, Bet HaDfus (Govt Offices), and an engineering tour-de-force, the bridge by Calatrava (diagonal white spike, upper right) .

13-Bet HaDfus, Government Offices

14-Har Nof, a Western Jerusalem neighborhood

15-The Partisan's Panorama pays tribute to Jewish fighters who joined the partisans during the Holocaust.

16-The Partisan's Panorama. The tree is a symbol of the partisan fighter, who depended on the forest and its trees for hiding places.

17-"We are Here!", Song of the Jewish Partisans, first of four verses. In Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. Hear Chava Alberstein sing it in Yiddish as 1930s photos of partisans are shown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMc555-B4fo

18-Boxcar for transporting 100 people to death camps. An original German cattle car given to Yad Vashem by Polish authorities. The German reads "German Railways, Munich."

19-Warsaw Ghetto Square–Wall of Remembrance. The wall of red bricks symbolizes the ghetto walls.

20-Warsaw Memorial. In the center is Mordechai Anielewicz, leader of the Ghetto Uprising.

21-Warsaw Memorial, "The Last March," depicts the mass deportation of the Jews to the death camps.