Heat hung around me like a cloud of evil. I drained a water bottle, and with squinted eyes stared through the gates of hell. It seemed I had chosen the hottest day of all to visit Yad Veshem, Israel�s Holocaust centre. But that was only appropriate. Comfort would be rude here.

Yad Veshem is sits atop Memorial Hill in the outskirts of Jerusalem. No warehouse for cold artifacts, this sprawling complex includes memorials, art, a museum, and an active research centre. It is both a reminder and a warning.

The eyes. Never will I forget the eyes. Time and distance will never dull the boy�s hold on me. More than a million children and babies died in the death camps. Huge black and white photographs of some of these victims shackled me at the entrance of Yad Veshem�s Children�s Memorial. I am unsure how long the boy�s knife-like stare held me, but it was a long time. Other visitors surged by in slow-motion, navigating their way around me while never looking at me. They too were captured by the boy.

He was probably killed well before the age of ten, which means he never attended a university, never made love, never knew the satisfaction of growing old. Why was he robbed of so much? The usual answer is a shallow tale of criminals and victims.

The real answer, however, is that this little boy simply was born on the wrong side at the wrong time in the pathetic game of human divisions. I watched Jewish visitors as they watched the boy, and imagined their thoughts: �How could they do this to us?�

They. Us.

The question contains the answer.

One final time, I glanced into the boy�s eyes, then turned away. The remainder of the small Children�s Memorial was a dark room containing a single candle. Its flame was multiplied throughout the room hundreds of thousands of times by mirrors. A recorded voice droned on endlessly with a roll call of young victims. For me, this all symbolised not only immeasurable pain, but also lost potential. Clearly our species clearly is in no position to throw away lives as we do. How can anyone defend the system of fabricated categories when it leads to the slaughter of children like these?

Suicide. If we were not divided by ludicrous borders of the mind, then the organised murder of millions could never occur. Think about it, remove the artificial divisions of nations, race and religion and our favourite games of evil become impossible to play.

History paints the Holocaust as a tale of genocide, of guilty demons and innocent angels. In reality, however, the Holcaust was suicide. It was humans killing humans. It was about believing in labels and paying a steep price for it. Labels should not have mattered then, and they did not matter to me that day. I am not a Jew, yet I felt wounded by the Holocaust. I am not a Nazi, yet I felt shame.

Tears. Walking the ground of Yad Veshem, I had the recurring feeling that I was in a cemetery.

I was.

Before entering the Hall of Remembrance, I was handed a cap and told to put it on. I was unsure what I visiting. On the floor, at the centre of the gloomy stone building was a flame. Spread out around it were names on the floor. I assumed they were names of people, until one caught my eye: �Auschwitz�.
The names of 22 death camps were engraved in both Hebrew and English. The infamous Auschwitz, of course, was the most ghoulish factory of them all, designed to produce maximum suffering and death. At its peak, the camp exterminated more than 10,000 prisoners per day. The chilling design makes these camps and the Holocaust repulsive beyond the horrific number of victims. To reduce the fuel costs of camp crematoriums, for example, engineers designed special trays to trap body-fat in the ovens. The fat was intended to be used as a fuel. This failed, however, because the majority of victims were so thoroughly starved that they lacked enough body-fat to be of use.

Another shocking example of this desire for efficiency at murder was the use of �gas vans�. Up to forty prisoners would be loaded into the sealed rear of a van. On the way from the pickup point to a burial site, the vehicle�s exhaust was pumped into the rear compartment, killing the victims by the time they arrived for burial or burning. More than 200,000 Jews were killed in these gas vans between 1941 and 1943.

I thought about these facts and others as I watched the lonely flame dance within smoke. No one made noise in that room. I learned later that the ashes of some Holocaust victims are buried in the floor.

Beside me, I noticed a woman, perhaps in her 70s. She cried quietly to herself. I wondered, was she there, at one of these camps? Did she lose someone close? Or did she simply care?

Hot metal. The cruel sun raged above, but I could not run for cover. There were too many things to see scattered around Yad Veshem. One lonely sculpture, called �Silent Cry�, effectively hints at the ache of hopelessness that so many must have felt during the Holocaust.

A huge metal sculpture of Jewish prisoners writhing within barbed wire hovers before the modern Jerusalem skyline. It was moving to see such a troubled but enduring city framed by an image of the Jews� tangled history. I thought of how resilient and strong humans can be. The Jewish people have been hated and slaughtered with astounding regularity throughout history, yet they live on with remarkable energy and success. For example, Jews represent only about .25% of the global population, yet, according to University of South Florida anthropology professor Dr. Ailon Shiloh, Jews have won some 15% of all Nobel Prizes.

I encountered another stunning sculpture. It was pure agony in human form, looking up at the sky while clutching emptiness. I watched the face closely, imagining that the hot metal might find life at any moment and ask me for help. I wished that it could have.

The art at Yad Veshem surprised me. I expected a depressing tour of evil, and got it, but I never imagined I would find such touching and inspirational art.

Wet blood. Military service is mandatory for Israelis, and, apparently, a visit to Yad Veshem is a part of their training. I watched as hundreds of very young soldiers shuffled through the history lesson. Resting outside, I noticed a stack of machine-guns. The death tools made me realise that Yad Veshem is more than a look back in time. Yad Veshem is a glance in the mirror. Tragic stupidity blackened the skies of Europe with cancelled lives, and people still cry for it today. Decades have past and the blood has not dried, but has anything changed?

The young warriors of the Holy Land seemed so innocent, so pure. Would they really kill strangers if ordered? Yes, most likely they would, because somewhere there are strangers willing to kill them. Still, we are ancient tribes, more capable in some things, but hardly more sophisticated. Our journey of a million years has left us with ourselves. Still, we are divided for ridiculous reasons. Still, race, religion, and nations remain life and death issues in the minds of most. Still, we cling to walls rather than one another.