Chamber of the Holocaust on mount Zion – the world's oldest Museum dedicated to the genocide of Jews during the Second world war. It is small, one might even say – modest, not so widely known as the memorial complex Yad Vashem. But the tourist will not miss it, if you want to know more about one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century.

The Museum opened almost immediately after the war, in 1948. Point for its location was not chosen by chance: on the Holy mount Zion Jews, right next to the tomb of king David. The house immediately became a Museum – it was conceived as a symbolic place of burial exterminated by the Nazis of Jewish communities, but later it became clear: the tragic artifacts should see as many people as possible. Manages the Museum Orthodox yeshiva (religious school).

Several rooms that make up the Chamber of the Holocaust, located in the basement. Dark, the dark room lit by candles that immediately creates an appropriate atmosphere. Among the exhibits – bloodstained scroll of the Torah from Poland; handwritten prayer book from the concentration camp Buchenwald; homemade Tefillin (part of the prayer vestments), very small, just tiny to avoid being noticed by the guard; made from sacred to Jews for Torah scrolls, handbags, wallets, soles, even the jacket, which went to a German officer. This jacket is clearly made to sew tailor-Jew, and he had done what she could: selected pages from 26th Chapter of Leviticus with warnings and curses the wicked.

Many may cry photos taken by an American soldier in the liberation of Buchenwald. Deeply shocking model of the gas chambers, the urn with the ashes of burnt 36 prisoners of the Nazi death camps and, finally, soap, apparently brewed from human fat.

And yet the Central element of the Chamber of the Holocaust – not the individual exhibits, but a lot of tablets on the walls of the courtyard, rooms, corridors. So is preserved the memory of more than two thousands of destroyed Jewish communities – each plaque says, the community where she lived and when it was destroyed, the words of the prayers. The survivors of the Holocaust hold memorial services on the day of the death of their community.

It is this, not the size of the premises – the main difference of the Museum on mount Zion from the later of Yad Vashem. While Yad Vashem is trying to show the tragedy of the individual, the Chamber of the Holocaust focuses on the destruction of communities and collective religious memory. Visitor, not even reading in Hebrew or Yiddish, looks at the plate and understands that disappeared a huge part of folks, and it's irreparable.