Haifa

Enthusiastic about pancakes
at breakfast!

Whatever was lacking in yesterday's touring in Akko, was more than made up today by an absolutely fantastic day. We started out the morning with a great hostel breakfast, and then set out fortified for Lohamei Hagetaot, the Ghetto Fighters museum. This place blew us away. The museum is located on a kibbutz by the same name, which was founded in 1949 by a group of about 100 Holocaust survivors, among them the surviving resistance fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto. On the same day they established the kibbutz, they also started building the museum - the first in the world to commemorate the Holocaust. This deeply moving museum had several incredible exhibits - we could have stayed all day. We first spent a lot of time in the Jews of Holland during the Holocaust exhibit. About 80% of the Dutch Jews were killed by the Nazis, a very high percentage, which was especially striking given the high level of acceptance and integration before the war. The exhibit did a great job of describing how the anti-Jewish policies were implemented so gradually that no one thought to fight back until it was too late.

We also spent a lot of time in the very well designed Hall of Remembrance. The hall was wall to wall black cases filled with artifacts from the Holocaust. To see the contents of a case, you needed to press a button on it which illuminated the case and brought up a display on which you could type the numbers of the items for more information. This interactive presentation made you choose which items you wanted to see, so that rather than case after case of boring artifacts, the displays became objects that came back as if by magic from obscurity, something you entered into and made an effort to see. In this hall was also a visual display of the name of the Jewish communities that were destroyed in the war. The names were formed by letters that drifted across the screen. It took a minute and a half for each community's name to be formed, and then the viewer had only a second and a half to view it before it began to break apart again. Very powerful.

We were fascinated by the exhibit on the Ghetto resistance fighters, which told stories of incredible strength and bravery in ways I had never quite heard them before. It included a model of some of the houses in the ghetto, adding dimensionality to the history, and was interlaced with the memories of some of the founders of the kibbutz. We probably could have spent all day in the Home of Testimony, which contains the personal accounts of the founders of the kibbutz. And we were moved by "Treblinka Hall" which contains a scale model of the Treblinka Camp, built by a survivor of the camp (and used during the trial of Adolf Eichmann). It was here that we listened to an excerpt from a speech by Himmler in which his conflicted feelings about the genocide he was orchestrating were obvious. This hall is also the first Holocaust museum space in which the exhibits are presented in Arabic (along with Hebrew and English).

Finally, we went over to Yad LeYeled (a child's hand), the part of the museum which is a memorial to the 1.5 million children who were killed in the Holocaust. The main exhibit allows children and adults to experience an introduction to the Holocaust (and especially to the children who were survivors and victims of it) in a visceral way, each at his or her own level, through stories, videos, and three dimensional sets.

We reluctantly left this amazing (and amazingly sad) museum, and drove to Haifa, fortuitously finding what we think was free, convenient parking (unless we get a parking ticket in the mail!) right near the Bahai gardens, and arriving just in time for the one English tour per day. The Bahai gardens are spectacular, with every inch perfectly manicured, and a real sense of peace from the perfect flowers to the water flowing down alongside the 700 steps (we walked down all of them!). The tour ended at the bottom of the gardens in the German Colony of Haifa, where we had a delicious Chinese food lunch (we took a very welcome break from Israeli food for the day).

Cool cable car up to Carmelite
church

On board the Af-al-pi-chen

Next we caught a cab and went to the Clandestine Aliyah and Naval Museum. It was fabulous. A ship called the Af-al-pi-chen ("Nevertheless") is the centerpiece of the museum. This ship was the first Aliyah Bet ship to sail for Palestine after the passengers of the Exodus has been sent back to Germany by the British (thus the same of the ship..."you might send them back, but nevertheless, we will try again to bring Jews to Palestine"). There was a really good movie about the efforts to bring Jews into Palestine in the years after WWII, despite the efforts of the British to keep them out. The museum also presents the history of the Israeli Navy - complete with a submarine and large battleship that we could go into, great displays about various naval battles etc.

Looking through the periscope on the submarine

Last but not least, we headed back to the center of town for popsicles (of course), fresh squeezed orange juice, and a ride on the coolest subway in the world. The Carmelit (the only subway in Israel and one of the smallest subway systems in the world) goes straight up Mount Carmel, thus the entire subway is on a slope - with each station a series of steps. Sylvia was really excited about this cool train. As it started to move, she yelled, "ready, set, go!" and then marveled the whole way up (6 stations) about how the train was climbing a mountain.

Enthusiastic about the cool train!

On the drive back from Haifa to Akko (where we are still staying) we stopped at a huge Supersol Deal Extra (the biggest supermarket we have been in in Israel). Great prices and great selection. So we continued our non-Israeli food day by buying the fixings for a picnic of turkey, pesto, sun dried tomato, and spinach sandwiches (although Sylvia decided to go another way and make herself a grapes and animal cracker sandwich instead - to each their own!) which we ate in the comfortable and cool courtyard of the hostel.