Yad Vashem – Museum of the Shoah (Catastrophe). Shoah – the Hebrew is called the Holocaust, the mass extermination of Jews by Hitler's regime. Six million European Jews were shot, burned, strangled gas, died from torture, starvation and disease in concentration camps. The memorial complex Yad Vashem seeks to keep the memory of their names – no wonder its name means "memory and name" or "place name". These are the words of the old Testament: "... so will I give in mine house and within My walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off" (Isaiah 56:5).

That was murdered not the names of the victims and those who risked their lives to save Jews, began to think back during the war. In 1948 at mount Zion was founded the first Museum of the Holocaust, and in 1957 opened Yad Vashem.

To remain on its territory is very difficult, in a historic building even cry grown men. Planning a visit to the memorial, better take on it all day: study takes several hours, but after it is impossible to switch to something entertaining.

18 acres located Valley of the destroyed communities, the Children's memorial Wall of remembrance of the Warsaw ghetto, the Hall of Memory... the Wagon for the transportation of livestock, in which Jews were sent to camps, symbolically stopped on the tracks in front of the cliff. The monument of Janusz Korczak shows the famous Polish writer and teacher with his followers as orphans – he went with them to a concentration camp, although he could be saved. Active synagogue saves storage cabinets Torah and other items salvaged from the demolished synagogues by the Nazis of Europe.

The memorial includes a video and training centers, archives, library, international research Institute of Disaster, the art Museum, which houses thousands of artworks created in ghettos and camps. A special unit deals with the righteous among the Nations – this award is given to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. In honor of the heroes named trees planted in the Avenue and Garden of the righteous among the Nations. Their number is not completely clear, the Museum continues to receive information about cases of salvation.

An important goal of Yad Vashem is to personalize the Catastrophe, to show that there were six million individual murders. This idea embodies the main building's history Museum, which opened in 2005. His unusual project was created by the famous architect Moshe safdie. Concrete building with an area of 4200 square meters looks like a two-hundred-meter boom length – it pierces the mount of Remembrance, which is Yad Vashem. In the underground corridor of the history of the genocide of the Jews is shown in chronological order through thousands of personal belongings of the victims and survivors, documents, letters, movies. In the center of the Hall of Names at the end of the corridor – more than 600 photos of the victims.

Shocked visitors who pass this way of horror, fall into the "tail" of the building boom. There is an observation deck that offers a beautiful panorama of the mountains and modern Jerusalem: light, space, life that goes on, no matter what.