Somewhere around 1949, the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal arrived in Israel with a casket containing filled with vessels of ashes, remains of those who had been incinerated in Europe that he and other survivors had collected from throughout Austria, in an effort to erect a grave and memorial in the young State of Israel.
In those days, Samuel Zangwil (S.Z.) Kahana, Director General of the Ministry of Religion, was developing David’s Tomb and the area of Mount Zion, which, for the first time in history, was in Jewish hands, since at the same time the more traditional holy places (Old City, Western Wall) were on the other side of the border at that time.
On the tenth of Tevet 1950, the coffin containing the ashes was placed on Mount Zion, in a room named the Chamber of the Holocaust. The place quickly began to develop as an unassuming, traditional and religious memorial site that meets the human need for prayer and memory, and doesn’t subject itself to academic standards of historical research.
Chamber of the Holocaust: Zoom Discussion
On April 20, 2020, Israel commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. This year, because the coronavirus crisis has kept most people at home and people are not allowed to congregate, our program Window to Mount Zion held a special online commemoration event on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The event featured a panel that included: Eli Dan, Director of the Chamber of the Holocaust, Dr. Zohar Maor, Researcher and Lecturer in History at Bar-Ilan University, tour guide Gavri Assouline, and Meirav Horovitz Stein, Coordinator of Window to Mount Zion.
Each of the panelists spoke about different aspects of the Chamber of the Holocaust – from the history of its establishment, to its history since then, to special artifacts that are found there to anecdotes about the unique experience the site provides. Dozens of people participated in the special event. You can watch the entire event here (in Hebrew):
Here is the Facebook post (in Hebrew) about the event, from the Window to Mount Zion Facebook page.
Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the US Embassy in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for their support of Window to Mount Zion.
