Leah Goldstein

"I Suddenly Felt I Was No Longer Myself"

“The new decree is exceptional. No one was in a hurry to obey it, putting it off to the very last minute. The decree itself does not cause any physical pain, nor does it involve great expense… No! Better to shut oneself up at home for an entire year than to become a subject of mockery! Not to go out wearing a yellow badge on your clothes, a target for scorn, derision, humiliation.”From Simcha Guterman, Leaves from the Ashes (Heb.) Read more

Keeping the Hope Alive

"I am alive and I am free. After three torturous years I am back to being a man like all others. The German bastards have murdered my entire family. Lyuba and Arik are no longer with me. I still hope to find them." Hirsh Brik (father of future Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak), Kovno, September 1944 "While probing around for the fate of my relatives here in Belgium, I encountered Mr. Mendel Toder, a relative of yours. I promised him that I would inform you that, by God’s grace, the... Read more

From Rescued to Rescuer: Holocaust Survivor Takes Part in Two Rescue Missions

For almost three years until the end of the WWII, Harry Klausner was hidden with his sister Ruth at the home of Oepke Haitsma and Jitske Haitsma-Tiesma in Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands. The Haitsmas’ children could not bring home friends, lest the existence of the secret guests be revealed, and Harry and Ruth were not allowed to play outside. With neither books nor toys, all Harry could do was look out of the attic window at the Allied planes passing over the houses on their way... Read more

Dilemmas and Sacrifices. Yad Vashem Symposium Highlights Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust

In 1941, Yoshko Indig (Josef Itai), a young madrich (counsellor) in the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, set out with a group of orphaned Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia on a four-year-long rescue journey. The journey took the group through occupied Yugoslavia and Italy and into neutral Switzerland, until he and the children finally reached the shores of the Land of Israel at the end of the war. Along the way, Indig was aided by two other Jewish rescuers, Aron Menczer and... Read more

Holocaust Education in a World without Survivors

I’m afraid that in the future the Holocaust will become just another historical episode; that’s why it’s important that the story be told from a personal perspective: numbers alone have no meaning.”Holocaust survivor Rena Quint, volunteer guide in Yad Vashem's Holocaust History Museum Read more

"A Champion of Life". Commemorative Israeli Citizenship Conferred Upon Italian Righteous Gino Bartali

On 2 May 2018, as part of the events leading up to the Giro d'Italia Cycling Race's "Big Start," Yad Vashem hosted participants of the Israel Cycling Academy and leadership of the Giro d' Italia at an event posthumously bestowing Commemorative Citizenship of the State of Israel on Righteous Among the Nations Gino Bartali. Read more

Tears of Anguished Pride

On 24 July 1943, a concert was held in secret in the Kovno ghetto, marking the anniversaries of the deaths of the leader of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and the celebrated Hebrew and Yiddish poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik. Seventy-five years later almost to the day, this concert was revived in its entirety at Yad Vashem on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. Read more

Flashes of Memory. Photography During the Holocaust

"The photograph: It cannot say what it lets us see." Roland Barthes Many different parties created visual documentation during WWII: For the Nazi German regime, visual media played a crucial role in propaganda as a means of expression and a tool for manipulating and mobilizing the masses. This kind of documentation attested to Nazi ideology, and how German leaders sought to mold their image in the public eye. The Allied armies, who understood the propaganda value of photographing the camps... Read more

Everlasting Memory. New Shoah Heritage Campus to be built at Yad Vashem

"As I stand on the border between life and death, certain that I will not remain alive, I wish to take leave from my friends and my works… My works I bequeath to the Jewish museum to be built after the war. Farewell, my friends. Farewell, the Jewish people. Never again allow such a catastrophe." From the Last Will and Testament of Gela Seksztajn, 1 August 1942 On the precipice of death, amid the transports from the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1942 and only half a year before she and her... Read more

"But My Soul is Free"

On 25 January 2016, the week of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, German Chancellor H.E. Angela Merkel opened a new exhibition of artworks from the Yad Vashem Art Collection at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Jointly curated by Yad Vashem and the Bonn-based Foundation for Art and Culture, "Art from the Holocaust: 100 Works from the Yad Vashem Collection" was the first-ever art exhibition of its size and stature that Yad Vashem has sent abroad. The exhibition was on display until... Read more

An Arduous Road

On 8 December 2006, an exhibition entitled “An Arduous Road: Samuel Bak – 60 Years of Creativity” opened at Yad Vashem’s Exhibitions Pavilion, in the presence of Ambassador of Lithuania H.E. Mrs. Asta Skaisgiryte Liauskiene, celebrated author Amos Oz, renowned artist Samuel Bak, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Joseph (Tommy) Lapid, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev and Senior Art Curator of Yad Vashem’s Museums Division Yehudit Shendar. “The interconnected... Read more

An Incredible Journey

Twinning Program Connects British Schoolgirl to the Fate and Family of Young Holocaust Victim Two years ago, British schoolgirl Victoria Sarah Galia Caplin began a journey whose ending she could never have imagined. Just before her Bat Mitzvah in the summer of 2015, she and her parents decided to mark this special milestone in her life by remembering a young Jewish girl who had been murdered in the Holocaust and was not lucky enough to celebrate her own Bat Mitzvah. "I had heard about Yad... Read more

"Superficial Knowledge Can be Catastrophic". Swedish Educators Attend Teachers Seminar at Yad Vashem

"I grew up in a pretty normal family – a mother and five siblings – but in a xenophobic environment. My older brother was in the neo-Nazi movement, my mother was a xenophobe, my grandfather was a Nazi in the 1940s. That is my family story." So recalled Peter Sundin, a participant of a recent seminar at Yad Vashem for Swedish educators. Sundin and a colleague who also hailed from a neo-Nazi background joined 25 teachers who came to the Mount of Remembrance to learn more about the Shoah and... Read more

"Interesting, Inspiring, Surprising": Summer Interns at Yad Vashem

Over the months of June-August 2017, Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies welcomed a number of young interns eager to help out in preparing materials and organizing seminars, and looking forward to learning more about the World Center for Holocaust Remembrance in return. Four of the interns – a Rwandan genocide survivor, and Evangelical Christian, a Latin-American Jewish history student and a former Birthright participant – spoke about their time at the International... Read more