The Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust
Kibbutz Tel Itzchak
Israel 45805

Tel. 972-2-699563
Fax  972-2-697410


"To shed light on the darkness"
-------------------------------

The Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust was created
in the 1960s as a living memorial to members of Zionist Youth
Movements, and other victims of the Holocaust.

Among its founders were survivors and children of survivors. They
sought to establish an insitution at Kibbutz Tel-Itzchak, near
Netanya, that would stimulate interest in the Holocaust among
students and young adults from Israel and throughout the world.

The name "Massuah", meaning "beacon", was chosen to emphasize that
the purpose of this commemorative and educational facility is to
serve as a guide to the past, a warning for the future and to shed
light on the darkness and ambivalence associated with the
Holocaust, primarily among those born after 1946.

Through its in-depth seminars, specially crafter audio-visual
materials and literature and personal testimonies of Holocaust
survivors, Massuah brings to the young people of today a true
understanding of the human dilemmas and suffering endured by the
victims of those terrible times.

Massuah is a non-profit public institution, supported by the
government of Israel, the Ministry of Education and Culture,
Canadian Friends of Massuah, United Israel Appeal of Canada and
the Jewish Agency.

Blend of Education and Commemoration
------------------------------------

Education

The Institute for the Study of the Holocaust

* Seminars for Young People

	- One, two and three-day seminars for students at 
          junior and senior high schools and universities
          across Israel.
	- Specially designed seminars for disadvantaged and
          gifted students.
	- Multi-lingual seminars in English, French, German,
          Spanish and Russian for foreign students and new
          immigrants.
	- Brifing sessions for "March of the Living" participants
          from around the world.
* Teacher training programs for Israeli and foreign educators
* Publication of educational program kits including documentary
  films, a portable exhibition, a teacher's manual and student 
  workbooks.
* Extensive library of films and documents pertaining to the 
  Holocaust, which are used by educators and researchers.
* The Helen and Mendel Green Documentation Centre for videotaped
  survivor testimonies.
* The publication of an annual yearbook containing new research by
  leading scholars, annoted documents and survivor memoirs. The
  Yearbook is widely used by researchers, students and teachers as
  well as the general public.

Commemoration

The National Holocaust Remembrance Day Assembly - the Assembly is
one of four official national ceremonies that annually mark
Holocaust Rememberance Day in Israel. Thousands of people of all
ages and backgrounds fill the Massuah amphitheatre every year to
honor the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and
their accomplices.

Speakers and special guests include leading members of Israeli
society, government  (including past presidents) and the armed
services.

The Museum - Massuah's haunting Museum is housed in a monumental
hexagon-shaped building in the centre of the campus.

* The Commemoration Hall occupies most of the ground floor.
  Suffused with an atmosphere of contemplation and thought, the
  Hall incorporates six symbolic elements:

	- A paved courtyard symbolic of prewar Jewish villages
          in Eastern Europe
	- Six uncarved stones
	- The shadows of these stones, reflected against a white
          wall that faces west, suggesting the attitude of the
          western world towards the extermination of European
          Jewry.
	- A wall sculptured in black metal, representing the
          National Socialist ideology.
	- A synagogue sanctuary, whose stained glass window is
          inscribed with the words 'Thou Shalt Not Murder'
	- The unplastered eastern wall which symbolizes destruction. 

* A Tunnel housing The Exhibit of the Final Journey, which
  replicates by use of a paved railroad track running through its
  length, the route the Jews took from deportation in the death
  trains to the concentration camps, death camps and crematoria.

* The Holocaust Postal Exhibit contains a unique collection of
  postcards, letters, packages, stamps and postmarks from the
  Holocaust period. Coded letters and descriptions of life in the
  ghettos and camps, as well as a rare collection of Nazi stamps
  provide the visitor with a very different perspective on the
  Holocaust. 

* The Zionnist Youth Movements Exhibit portrays the activities of
  those organizations in Europe which prepared youngsters to be the
  vanguard of their people and builders of a new Jewish society in
  Eretz Yisroel.

* The Salvino Children Exhibit depicts the rehabilitation of
  children who survived the Holocaust, by focussing on the
  children's house established in Northern Italy. Over 840 children
  from around Europe were gathered here from 1945 to 1948 by
  soldiers of the Jewish Brigade and emissaries from Palestine.

* The Kovno Ghetto Underground and the Ninth Fort monographic
  exhibit describes the Jewish underground that operated in the
  Kovno ghetto and in the nearby extermination site, Fort Number
  Nine.

                        A Look to the Future
                            New Exhibits

* The Eichmann Trial - Six Million Accusers is dedicated to the
  memory of Gideon Hausner, the late Attorney General of Israel and
  Chief Prosecutor of Adolph Eichmann.

The new exhibit will reconstruct the drama of the Eichmann Trial,
which exposed the full scale of the heroism and suffering of the
Jewish people as well as the calculated monstrosity of their
tormentors. The Eichmann Trial opened a floodgate of information
and emotion that had previously been kept closed, all of which
will be incorporated in the new exhibit.

Visitors will have an opportunity to relive the trial itself in a
simulation of the actual courtroom in which it was held and to
sense the atmosphere, excitement and air of intensity which
pervaded all Israel at that time.

* Zionist Youth Movements - From Avant Garde to Mass Movements
  1936-1946 will utilize the latest theories of interactive learning
  processes applied to exhibitions. A wooden shack, in the centre of
  the exhibit, will serve as a symbol of the youth groups' meetings
  which were normally held in such shacks and as a metaphor to the
  resilience of these young people who experienced the destruction
  of their old world in Europe and the creation of a new world in
  Israel.

This exhibit will provide today's young visitors with an
opportunity to understand and emphathize with the emotions,
tragedies and decisions which befell people their age before,
during and after the Holocaust.

* Art Exhibit of work by artists whose parents are survivors will
  graphically depict the impact of the Holocaust on survivors'
  families.

----

The Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust
Kibbutz Tel Itzchak
Israel 45805

Tel. 972-2-699563
Fax  972-2-697410

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor