Part of Window to Mount Zion’s mission is to share and raise awareness about the unique and emotional events that take place on Mount Zion by all different communities. Its Facebook page recently shared the emotional ceremony that took place at the Chamber of the Holocaust, which is operated by the Diaspora Yeshiva.
Holding an annual ceremony at the Chamber of the Holocaust
As a part of our virtual tour of Mount Zion, we have made a clip about the Chamber:
Every year, on the tenth of Tevet on the Hebrew calendar, the Diaspora Yeshiva holds a traditional ceremony in the Chamber of the Holocaust, the first commemoration of the Holocaust that was built after Israel’s War of Independence, soon after the Holocaust. This year, rabbis and yeshiva students gathered and prayed in memory of those who perished in the Holocaust.
Every year, Nechama Cohen, daughter of Rabbi Dr. Samuel Zangvil Kahana, who was Director-General of the Ministry of Religion in the late 1940’s and founded the Chamber of the Holocaust, is invited to the ceremony (she also appears in our clip on David’s Tomb). Nechama gave a heartfelt speech, reminding us of the special context of Mount Zion and its proximity to David’s Tomb. Nechama recounted from her memoirs, as a child in the early 1950s, how Holocaust survivors who immigrated from Europe would visit David’s Tomb, which at that time was the holiest place within the borders of the young State of Israel, and, with the help of her father, created such a touching and human memorial to those who perished.
Nechama Cohen giving an emotional speech
Today the Chamber of the Holocaust holds a double memory – the memory of the six million who died in the Holocaust, as well as the memory of those who remembered – the survivors who arrived in Israel immediately after the war and sought to establish an intimate and traditional monument in memory of their disappeared communities. Thanks to the Diaspora Yeshiva for leading the emotional ceremony.
Here’s the post in Hebrew from the Window to Mount Zion Facebook page:
Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of Window to Mount Zion!
