Two months ago I was in Israel for the second time and visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum located near Jerusalem. The museum experience, renovated in 2005, is sensational. The main part of the museum is an elongated building in the shape of a prism, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere. It is 180 meters long, but the visitor cannot cross it in a straight line: he must follow a serpentine path that “enters” and “exits” the prism, following the narrative.

At the entrance we are greeted by a projection, a ten-minute video created by Michal Rovner called “The World That Was”, a collage of images showing the life of European Jews before the Holocaust. Here is such a “deployment” of history. From the early anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis and how the propaganda portrayed the Jews as inferior beings, for example, a board game of the time called “Juden Raus” in which the player who first “knocked out” six Jews is shocking cities. Then we see how the first ghettos were created, how persecutions and murders began, how concentration camps were created. The museum’s narrative culminates in the story of survivors and bereaved, and a dome of 600 faces of Holocaust victims, accompanied by an ever-expanding archive of all victims.

During the tour, the guide asked if there were people from Greece in our international group. He reminded us that in our country there were fewer victims in number, but most of all in percentage terms, since 98% of the Greek Jews were destroyed. The museum has several references to Greece, such as the lists of children from Thessaloniki, the tickets they were given when they got on the train that was supposed to take them to the death camps, and wrote “back and forth” to calm them down. One of the most touching references is in a room that pays tribute to those non-Jews who risked their lives to save their fellow Jews. Among the examples listed by country is an elderly couple from Greece. You are unlikely to leave this museum indifferent. Even if somewhere inside you there is a big thorn in what is happening in Palestine.

After writing a few days ago about the completion of the urban framework for the construction of the Holocaust Museum, I was thinking about the possibilities that this would open up for Thessaloniki and Greece in general. First, it will (finally) shed light on the history of the Greek Jews in Thessaloniki who inflicted “trauma” on the city. In addition, the museum’s narrative of Yad Vashem’s aesthetics will be a valuable educational tool for all of us (don’t forget about the anti-Semitism of part of society) and, why not, a pole of attraction for visitors: Israelis love Greece and visit it more and more. It is in the interests of our country to surround this matter with great caution.