Aa

Adjust size of text

Aa

Follow us and continue the conversation

Your saved articles

You haven't saved any articles

What are you looking for?

Israel’s first Holocaust museum: overlooked and under-visited

Eetta Prince-Gibson
Print this
9

Published: 4 February 2019

Last updated: 5 March 2024

ON MOUNT ZION, just outside the Old City Walls, several stairs lead down to the labyrinth of caves that make up the museum of the Chamber of the Holocaust.

Established in 1948, the Chamber of the Holocaust was Israel’s first official Holocaust museum.  For years, the Chamber was the place for Holocaust survivors and victims’ descendants, especially those who did not know where their loved ones were buried, to light memorial candles, recite the Kaddish, (the mourner’s prayer), and remember.

Over the years, the Chamber of the Holocaust has been eclipsed by Yad Vashem, which was established in 1953 and receives vast government and international funding.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, tensions raged between the Ministry of Religious Affairs, who maintained a religious stance and wanted the Chamber of the Holocaust to be the preeminent site of commemoration, and the officials of Yad Vashem, who represented a state perspective. It was a battle between the religious and the secular; the centrality of the community or the centrality of the individual.

The state supported Yad Vashem.

Today the Chamber is no longer an official state museum and is maintained by the nearby Diaspora Yeshiva, an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva with strong ties to the ultra-Orthodox community in the United States.

In Hebrew it is known as the Cellar of the Holocaust, which is a more-fitting description. In contrast to Yad Vashem’s monumental architecture, its underground rooms are dark and dank. Unlike Yad Vashem, it has no well-designed narrative paths, no cafeteria, no reception rooms, and no technological wows to guide the occasional visitor through the exhibits.

And yet, despite all this – or perhaps, because of all this – a visit to the Chamber of the Holocaust is a compelling emotional experience.

Shmuel Zanvel Kahane, the then-Director General of the Ministry of Religion, decided to establish the museum on Mount Zion for numerous reasons. Taking advantage of an abandoned set of buildings and caves, he referred in his writings to the phrase from the book of the prophet Ovadia (1:17): “And on Mount Zion there shall be a remnant, and it shall be holy.”

Kahane, however, also attached deep spiritual meaning to Mt Zion. Between 1948 and 1967, Jerusalem’s Old City and East Jerusalem were under Jordanian control, and Mt Zion, located to the south of Zion Gate, with its panoramic views over the Old City, the Mt of Olives, the Valley of the Kidron and West Jerusalem, was as close as Israelis could get to the Old City and the Western Wall.
Yad Vashem aims to bring historical truth to light, in contrast to the legends and stories that Kahane, the founder of the Chamber, had emphasised. 

For centuries, Mt Zion has also been revered as the burial site of King David. In Jewish tradition, the Messiah will be a descendant of King David. The museum was thus intended to create a symbolic and spiritual link between the pain and pangs for the coming of the Messiah that will eventually bring the Messiah.  Indeed, on large poster near the entrance to the Chamber, are the words to the hymn, I believe, sung by the Jews as they marched to the gas chambers.

The museum focuses on remembrance of the destruction of the Jewish communities and centres of Jewish scholarship and study in Eastern Europe, the attacks on synagogues, the violation of holy books, and the humiliation of God’s faithful.  There are exhibits of desecrated Torah scrolls, some stained with blood, along with a shofar (ram’s horn), smuggled into Bergen-Belsen; a chanukiah (candelabra for Chanukah), carved from a potato; a siddur (prayer book) copied (apparently from memory) in tiny handwriting on scraps of paper with German writing on the other side.

One of the most significant items in the museum is a jacket sewn from pages from a Torah, commissioned by a Nazi soldier in a concentration camp who wanted to mock the Jews.  But the Jewish tailor used pieces of parchment taken from the Ki Tavo portion of the Bible, which contains 98 curses.  As he wore it, the Nazi was cursing himself.

Many of the items on display were brought by survivors; some, Kahane wrote in his memoirs, left on the doorstep of the museum at night.  Controversially, the museum displays several bars of soap, which are reported to have been made of human fat by the Nazis.  The idea that the Nazi’s produced soap from their Jewish victims has been largely discredited.

But the museum accepted them because Kahane was not interested in documentation, but rather in providing the survivors with a way to mourn, according to Zohar Maor a lecturer in history at Bar Ilan University who has edited Kahane’s works.  And this is how someone chose to mourn his loved ones and his community.

Kahane viewed the remembrance in communal terms, emphasising the responsibility of future generations to the past.  Furthermore, Maor told The Jewish Independent the emphasis on community provided a particular sense of comfort. “People lost not only their families, but their communities,” he explains. “In Israel, the survivors from communities set up organisations to remember their community, and also to give a sense of home and to provide the struggling new immigrants with food or Hebrew classes.”

The chamber’s walls are covered with more than 1,000 tablets — each one a symbolic headstone that represents a Jewish town or community destroyed during the Holocaust.  In the middle of the museum, a large mound, resembling a grave, stands over ashes found in concentration camps and brought to Israel.

The religious the religious orientation, the emphasis on community, and the importance of experience over documentation are just some of the differences between Chamber of the Holocaust and Yad Vashem.

Yad Vashem, says Maor, gave expression to the prevailing approach to the Holocaust in the late 1950 and 1960s. In the young State of Israel, nationalism and heroism were central values, presented in harsh contrast to the passivity of the Diaspora.

Yad Vashem aims to bring historical truth to light, in contrast to the legends and stories that Kahane had emphasised.  In the 1970s, it added a historical museum (replaced by the current Holocaust History Museum in 2005). Much of its materials, and especially the testimonials of survivors, have been digitised and are available to the public. It engages in Holocaust education and research.

Reflecting Israel’s now-dominant ethos, Yad Vashem has placed increasing emphasis on the individual survivor, as reflected in the “Each Person Has a Name” ceremony it sponsors every year, during which names of individuals murdered in the Holocaust are read aloud.

Even their locations point to the differences between the two institutions.  The Chamber of the Holocaust is in ancient East Jerusalem, part of a complex of ancient buildings, close to the Old City and its traditional holy sites. Yad Vashem is in modern West Jerusalem, part of the Mt Herzl complex, the government-appointed spot that includes Israel’s national military cemetery and the graves of Theodore Herzl (the founder of modern political Zionism) and other individuals who played significant roles in the founding of the State.

Over one million people visit Yad Vashem annually, and it now holds some 170 million pages of documentation, according to its spokespeople.  Annually, only a few thousand people visit the Chamber of the Holocaust, where, almost soundless and nearly forgotten, it continues to provide a different way to remember.

READ MORE
The Chamber of the Holocaust, Israel's obscure memorial (Reuters)

Photo: A man touches a gravestone commemorating the Jewish villages and towns whose communities were wiped out by the Nazis, inside The Chamber of the Holocaust (Reuters/Ronen Zvulun)

About the author

Eetta Prince-Gibson

Eetta Prince-Gibson, who lives in Jerusalem, was previously Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Report, is the Israel Editor for Moment Magazine and a regular contributor to Haaretz, The Forward, PRI, and other Israeli and international publications.

Keep our publication free:
Support quality journalism with your donation

Since 2015, TJI has provided an independent voice on Australia, Israel and the Jewish World at zero cost to our readers.

Your contribution — big or small — is critical in helping us create a platform for diverse content, fresh voices and regular coverage on issues that matter to you.

SELECT FREQUENCY
AUSTRALIA AU$

The Jewish Independent acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and strive to honour their rich history of storytelling in our work and mission.

Enter site