Yad Vashem

Today we had the joy of visiting the Israel Museum. Our major purpose was to explore the giant model of the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a great thing. And having spent ten days exploring the actual city it really helps to focus those explorations.
But, what a fantastic museum/art gallery it is. Apart from the fabulous display of modern Israeli art of phenomenally high quality I was also struck by teh outdoor installations, and the traditional paintings....why do there seem to be soi many Pisarros. One would think it rivals the Orsay; and the Gauguins, two beautiful Monets and Van Goghs, El Greco and Rembrandt. Didn't see a Picasso but there is almost bound to be the same!
But we then moved on to the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, which is dveadtating in many ways and needs more careful reflection than this blog.
The picture alongside is a dome of phots of holocaust victims, amidst a room full of files ....possibly 6.5 million....as you look up....or at least as I looked up,  I was quite overwhelmed. The as you look down there isa  deeep, deep pit. "Is this hell?" I wondered. And then you see a pool of water so far down and clear that it is more possible to think of it as a place of re-creation.  One hopes so.
But, as I say, it needs and will have more detailed reflection on my return. Good and great stuff.

Will we ever get over the Holocaust?

Yet another person I know was deeply effected by the simple little film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. 

It is almost facile, though when I read the slender book a couple of months ago I did so in one sitting, and in the end was late for an appointment because I had to finish it.

The film, which youngest S and I went to see, is easy to get into. And is annoying in the way that 8 year old boys can be annoying. But seldom have I sat in a theatre at the end of a film and felt so much Angst, there was deathly silence, and the youngest S (who hadn't quite known what she was letting herself) in was quite upset. At 15 she should know what Auschwitz was all about.

Though you can see the end of this film coming a mile away it is nevertheless deeply shocking.

I keep wondering what the real theme of it is. It is more than just never forgetting the Holocaust. (though I am inclined to think we never should)...if we look at each character as echoing the same thing it is about how easily we lose control of our lives, and how evil can overwhelm even the best of us. That life is disorienting and we should be on our guard (1 Peter 5:8).

None of this should surprise us. But it still has the capacity to shock

The Reader

If you ever doubted that the right person won the Oscar then you should go and see The Reader immediately. Kate Winslett is amazing as Hannah Schmitz, the one time prison guard who has an affair with the young Michael (also very good) who later witnesses her war-crimes trial. [Ralph Fiennes is dull as ditchwater as the destroyed adult Michael...but maybe that was the point].

It is part of the current trend of revisiting the motivations of war criminals, and in particular the ambivalence of those who were involved in the Holocaust (see for example Robert Manne's excellent review of The Kindly Ones in the Australian Literary Review today. Manne rightly questions what ther moral point and responsibility of such work is. As does another review here)

What strikes me is the ambiguity of almost everything that happens. The woman who gives a sickly young man his first experiuence of being truly loved, and yet at the same time robs him of his innocence...to the point od total destruction really).

And a woman so driven by a sense of duty that she cannot even distinguish between right and wrong. At the same time this is played off against a tribunal which has its own sense of duty and this duty seems to shun the truth. Hannah becomes their victim because she is too proud to admit her own too obvious inadequacy. Michael is given the chance to redeem her.

"What is the point?" His law professor says to him... "if your generation will not do what my generation was too afraid to do?"

It's very good!!