A country is not only what it does. It is also what it tolerates.

During our in-country orientation, our group had the opportunity to visit some sites throughout Jerusalem, including one afternoon at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem.

Yad Vashem is like many other Holocaust Memorial Museums I have visited in that it tells the story of the Holocaust through videos, eye-witness accounts, stories, public records, private records, pictures and artifacts. Like other memorials, there is a replica of the gate into Auschwitz concentration camp with the haunting fallacy "Arbeit macht frei" (work makes free) written on it, and images of the horrific atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust.

No group of people, no one, should be systematically hunted down, tortured and murder. Ever. Honestly, these things should not even be done haphazardly. The fact that mass genocides still occur in our world is hideous and shameful. Going to this museum helped me to understand the deep longing of the Jewish people for a homeland free from persecution and systematic destruction.

There is a quotation at Yad Vashem which reads, "A country is not only what it does. It is also what it tolerates." What a haunting sentiment. This quotation reminds us that although the Nazi regime took over Germany and enacted the racist policies which destroyed so many lives, any country which stands by in the midst of such destruction is likewise culpable.

Yad Vashem is not the only place in this country where you can find this quotation.

The quotation, "A country is not only what id does. It is also what it tolerates" written on the Wall near Bethlehem.

The implication of the quotation in this location is that there are still things going on which should neither be done nor tolerated. The horrors of the Holocaust are real and terrible; the pain of this atrocity lingers. Unfortunately, the end of the Holocaust was not the end of injustice, racism and pain.