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'I’m looking for the people who helped me,' says Shoah survivor at Yad Vashem

Rosa Doherty joined Holocaust survivors as they visited Yad Vashem

December 15, 2015 17:26
Association of Jewish Refugees members in Jerusalem, and (below) visiting Yad Vashem

By

Rosa Doherty,

Rosa Doherty

4 min read

They stood out like a sore thumb.Most of the foreign visitors pulling up in coaches in the car park at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, were either schoolchildren or tourists.

But this group was different - it included five survivors and refugees from London, with first-hand experience of the history recorded inside the white building carved into Mount Herzl, on the edge of Jerusalem.

"If you don't think you can face it, you don't have to go in," warned Jim Sutherland, the social worker from Association of Jewish Refugees, the organisation that had brought this small band of elderly Jews to Israel.

The survivors discussed their nervousness among themselves while their tour guide, Michael, himself a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, told them what to expect within the long, pyramid-shaped building.