What’s New | Spotlight on the Web | Names Recovery | Recent Events | With Your Support  |  Yad Vashem Magazine | Support Us

Dear Friend,
This year the central theme for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day was Children in the Holocaust. The torchlighters’ stories, online exhibitions, and educational materials on Yad Vashem’s special mini-site focus on that aspect of the Holocaust. You are invited to view the ceremony, delve into the stories of the torchlighters, experience a new online exhibition and learn about related educational materials.

Yad Vashem’s Annual Report 2008 is now available online. The Report is a window onto Yad Vashem’s global activities in the realms of Holocaust education, remembrance, documentation and research. A year replete with events, official visits, research projects, educational initiatives, Yad Vashem completed 2008 with over eight million visits to its website, one million visitors touring the campus, and hundreds of thousands of students and teachers at the International School for Holocaust Studies.

Spotlight on the Web

Approximately one and a half million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were children. Some children were able to escape by hiding while other children survived by concealing their identities. Special children’s homes were set up immediately after the war to meet the tremendous physical and emotional needs of the children who survived the Holocaust, many of whom had no home to return to or family to take them in. “A Time to Heal” (Ecclesiastes 3:3), The Story of the Children’s Home in Otwock, Poland, focuses on the children’s experiences from their arrival at one of these homes through the difficult and often painful process of healing and rehabilitation.

“Children in the Ghetto”, a joint project of the International School of Holocuast Studies and “Snunit”, an educational initiative of the Hebrew University Jerusalem, is an unique interactive educational environment now in four different languages: English, Hebrew, Russian and German. Created for and about children, the site describes life during the Holocaust from the viewpoint of children who lived in the ghetto and attempts to relate that complex experience in a way that is easily grasped by today’s children. At the core of the site is a representation of a street in the ghetto. The user “enters” the street and travels along it, stopping along the way. Each stop is accompanied by photographs, video testimonies and pictures that invite the child to an interactive experience, one that encourages deeper thought and reflection.

Highlights from the Newsroom

More than 10,000 visits to www.yadvashem.org came as a result of an article in the New York Times: “New Looks at the Fields of Death for Jews.” The article brings to the fore “The Untold Stories,” a research project of the International Institute for Holocaust Research. Additional media attention for this research project arrived via Haaretz in “Holocaust Remembrance / Researchers shed light on Nazi murder of Soviet Jews.”

Also featured in the New York Times, both in print and as an online exhibition, was “Behind Fairy Tale Drawings, Walls Talk of Unspeakable Cruelty,” profiling the new Bruno Schulz exhibit in the Museum of Holocaust Art: “Wall Painting Under Coercion". Also featuring the Schulz display was “Fairy tales from an Evil Time,” in the Independent.

Names Recovery

"Unto Every Person There is a Name", a worldwide Holocaust memorial project is now marking its 20th consecutive year. The project is aimed at perpetuating the memory of Shoah victims through public recitation of their names on Yom Hashoah. Click here for lists of Shoah victims’ names for recitation ceremonies or to read the names in this short video and accompanying text, which provides brief biographical information about the victims.
To find out how to launch a Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Campaign in your area please access our online Community Outreach Guide.

With Your Support...

Yad Vashem’s activities and programs would not be possible without the support of our many donors and friends. In these difficult days, when pursuing the important mission of commemoration of the Holocaust has never been more necessary, Yad Vashem more than ever needs you to join us in our efforts to transform commemoration into a lasting commitment to the Jewish people, to moral values and to responsible action.

Belgian Holocaust Victim Carol Deutsch’s Limited Edition Artwork- now available as part of a special campaign for Yad Vashem Supporters

In war-torn Antwerp of 1941, self-taught artist Carol Deutsch lovingly crafted a gift for his daughter Ingrid’s second birthday, an opus comprised of ninety-nine gouache paintings depicting Biblical narratives and protagonists. The collection donated to and displayed at Yad Vashem’s Museum of Holocaust Art, exhibits exceptional vitality and constitutes a stalwart expression of defiance to everything for which the Nazis stood.

Honoring the memory of Deutsch, who was murdered in Buchenwald in 1944, Yad Vashem is now launching a special campaign, offering our supporters the opportunity to own a limited edition replica of this beautiful collectors item for a donation of $10,000. All support generated by this campaign will go towards Yad Vashem’s efforts to educate against Antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Please contact the International Relations department for more information.

Yad Vashem welcomes the ongoing partnership and visits from its friends and supporters:

For more information on Friends of Yad Vashem please click here

Yad Vashem Quarterly Magazine

Read Yad Vashem’s Spring edition of its Jerusalem Magazine which has several special features: an article describing a new exhibition in the Museum of Holocaust Art –Bruno Schulz: Wall Painting Under Coercion; a section profiling Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day’s theme of Children in the Holocaust and the torchlighters’ biographies; a story focusing on the Righteous Among the Nations; book reviews; an unique story from the Yad Vashem Archives, and more.

► Sign up to receive our future newsletters.  

► See back issues here