noitallmr – to “appreciate”? I think you mean to be aware of would be a more proper term here….
I’ve been to Yad Vashem a few times over the years. The most meaningful time was a tour with Rabbi Asher Wade. He prefaced the tour with a clear hashkafa about the whole museum and what to expect and our approach to it. (At its mainly Zionistic core, it purposely leaves out references to G-d and Torah and things too overtly jewish). For example, when you first walk in, there is a quote on the wall from Anne Frank. They put a “…” in the quote right where she speak about Hashem and His ways. He imbues the whole thing with a strong sense of Am Yisrael, of respect and dignity for our grandparents and the kedoshim by deliberately NOT looking at the horrific often untznius pictures taken by the Nazis Y”SH. He impresses on the group about imagining the pictures in color and goes through some excersizes to help identify with it better. They most unbeleivable thing is when he tells over his own story in a quiet garden area in the middle of the tour. He is a ger tzeddek, having been a pastor in Germany, when he discovered his town’s roots involved in perpetrations against Jews and his many questions about his religion kept re-surfacing until he found jewish texts and their inherent wisdom and felt drawn toward emes. He now lives in Bnai Brak and teaches in schools and yeshivas.
He mentioned to us that the museum establishment disliked him coming and doing his quiet tour because it espoused what was really going on there, he said they would probably not allow him to continue for much longer.
I hear that he is not allowed to run his tours anymore, and that Rabbi Hanoch Teller does it now. I strongly reccomend going on a tour with someone like R’ Teller. I think her does them for a private groups too.
May our endeavor to remember the memory of these kedoshim help us strenghten our Avodas Hashem and our achdus and help bring Moshiach closer…. B’mhera Biyameinu!