[Toronto Star] Oakland Ross - They should persuade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, to take a stroll through Israel's hauntingly magnificent Holocaust Museum. No one, not even the president of Iran, could tour the museum at Yad Vashem and yet remain under any illusion that the Holocaust - the systematic murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II - is not an historical fact. What is perhaps most impressive about the museum is the steady accumulation of minute, quotidian details that quietly illuminate the genuine experiences of individual people, human beings whose only crime, in the eyes of the Nazis, was to be Jewish. Beneath four panes of thick glass embedded in the floor in one gallery lies a mute and yet eloquent exhibit - shoes, hundreds of pairs of men's and women's shoes all piled together without a word of explanation, for no explanation is needed.
2008-01-25 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive