Leah Goldstein

A Truly Meaningful Service: Holocaust Survivors' Descendant Volunteers at Yad Vashem

Last year, Orli Hartstein, originally from Columbus, Ohio, volunteered at Yad Vashem for a year of national service in the Art Department of Yad Vashem's Museums Division. There, she helped catalog art pieces and conducted research about artists whose works are among the thousands of creations in the Yad Vashem's unrivalled art collection. This job was both fulfilling and meaningful, as her family on both sides was deeply affected by the Holocaust. Orli's paternal ancestors hailed from Galicia... Read more

"A Very Real Threat": Jewish Elderly Resistance in Nazi Germany

In the summer of 1940, Berlin police officers arrested 70-year-old Siegmund Dornbusch, because he had watched a film despite the fact that it was forbidden for Jews. His case clearly challenges the assumption that it was mostly young Jews who rebelled against Nazi orders. Read more

Dance in Ghettos and Camps

While investigating the deportation of dancers, Dr. Laure Guilbert, Fellow at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research in the summer of 2022, became aware of aspects of the Holocaust unexplored in the history of ghettos and concentration camps: the role of dance in the genocidal strategies of the Nazi perpetrators, as well as in the deportees’ struggle for survival. Read more

The Yad Vashem Story Chapter 2: Establishing Yad Vashem in the Jewish Homeland

At the end of WWII, when the extent of the mass murders that were the lot of the Jews in Europe and North Africa (and could have been that of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel) were revealed, Mordechai Shenhavi once again raised the idea of a national institution to commemorate the Holocaust in Israel. On 25 May 1945, Shenhavi published his proposal for the "Yad Vashem Memorial for Destroyed Diaspora Jewry" in the Devar newspaper. "This eternal memorial that the Jewish people will establish in... Read more

The Yad Vashem Story. Chapter 1: Memorializing the Holocaust – Before It Had Ended

This month marks 80 years since the idea of Yad Vashem – the World Holocaust Remembrance Center – was proposed. The establishment of an institution or site to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust was formulated back in the darkest days of World War II, in 1942, while the campaign of extermination was still in progress. Many of the Jews, while living in the ghettos or in hiding, wrote diaries and letters, created artworks and film clips, collected documentation in secret archives, and... Read more

Forging a New Future: The New Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Leadership Academy

Marking one year since the passing of loyal friend and Patron of the Mount of Remembrance Sheldon G. Adelson, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, has launched the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Leadership Academy. Read more

Keeping Memory Relevant: International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2022

Chosen by the United Nations in 2005 to serve as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in 1945. As in years past, Yad Vashem actively marked the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust through a range of events, both in-person and online. Read more

A Rare Courage and Concern: French Railroad Worker Who Rescued Jews from Deportation

In September 1942, members of the local underground movement, including some 25 train workers, participated in a rescue process during which they saved dozens of Jews destined for deportation. Among the participants in the rescue attempt was Marcel Hoffman. Read more

Two Communities, One Tragedy: The Yad Vashem International Research Book Prize 2021

In mid-December 2021, Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research awarded the prestigious International Book Prize for Holocaust Research, in memory of Benny and Tilly Joffe z"l, to Prof. Eliyana R. Adler of Pennsylvania State University for her publication Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 2020), and to Dr. Leon Saltiel of the University of Macedonia for his book The Holocaust... Read more

Expanding Research for the Sake of Remembrance: Deportations of Jews from Smaller Communities in Occupied Poland

While Yad Vashem has been relatively successful in amalgamating evidence of the murders of Jews hailing from larger towns and cities at the hands of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, the fate of many smaller communities is relatively unknown, and in many cases has not been subject of thorough research. Read more

Voices from the Ghettos: Advanced Online Seminar for Italian Teachers

Some 120 Yad Vashem graduates from schools around Italy recently took part in an advanced online seminar entitled “Voices from the Ghetto.” Part of a series of activities offered by Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies to deepen the knowledge of subjects related to the Shoah, “Voices from the Ghetto” was introduced to the teachers in cooperation with Figli della Shoah, a Holocaust-education association based in Milan. After introductory words by Figli della Shoah... Read more

A Personal Tragedy: Nachman Blumental’s Archive Reveals the Fate of His Family

Dr. Katrin Stoll is a German-born Holocaust historian, today residing in Warsaw. In the new volume of Yad Vashem Studies (49:2), she takes a fascinating look at her chance findings of deeply personal accounts in the archive carefully built by Holocaust survivor Nachman Blumental in the 1940s. Nachman Blumental was a Polish-Jewish historian who studied literature and languages before WWII. He survived the Shoah by fleeing to the Soviet Union, and wrote for many underground newspapers. In 1944... Read more

"Active Participants in their Destiny": The Diana and Eli Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust 

On 5 August, a ceremony was held at Yad Vashem in recognition of the Zborowski family's continued support of the Diana and Eli Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Read more

The Romanian Paradox

In the spring of 2021, Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research hosted Dr. Gaëlle Fisher of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich on a three-month virtual fellowship. Dr. Fisher grew up in France, and then went on to study German and East European History. Her current topic of investigation is "The Romanian Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust: Perceptions and Actions." Read more

"New on Display": The Collection of Helga Wolfenstein King

A newly acquired collection recently opened in the "New on Display" area of the Museum of Holocaust Art. The artworks were created by Holocaust survivor Helga Wolfenstein King during her incarceration in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto.   Read more

"The Greatest Honor of My Life"

At the end of the summer, Israel's government approved the appointment of Dani Dayan as the new Chairman of Yad Vashem. Dayan, 65, was born in Argentina to a family originating from Eastern Europe, and served most recently as Consul General of Israel in New York. In a special interview for Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine, Dayan outlined his initial feelings on this appointment, as well as his understanding of Yad Vashem and its role for the Jewish people and humanity around the world. Read more

Tracing the Fate of Hilde Koch

Like previous volumes, the new volume of Yad Vashem Studies (49:1) covers a range of academic research on Holocaust-related topics. In one particularly fascinating account, Dr. Edel Sheridan-Quantz investigated the fate of Hilde Koch, a German children's book illustrator, during the Shoah.  Read more

The Eichmann Trial Revisited

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Eichmann Trial, the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, together with three institutes at Tel Aviv University, held an online conference that focused on the international aspects of the historic proceedings. The conference was attended by historians and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Israel and the United States. In a special interview with Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Prof. Roni Stauber, Academic Director of the Wiener... Read more

Saved from a Killing Pit

Pavel Natarov, a Ukrainian policeman during the Holocaust, was recently recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for saving a young Jewish girl who survived a mass murder of the Jews in her hometown. Read more

"Safely In, Safely Out"

At the beginning of May, a special online event was held to mark the retirement of Shulamit Imber, Pedagogical Director of the International School for Holocaust Studies and Fred Hillman Chair in Memory of Janusz Korzcak. In conversation with Jane Jacobs of the International School, Imber reflected on over three decades in which she pioneered Holocaust pedagogy and steered its programming in Israel and around the world, as well as the challenges that lie ahead. Read more

Starting Anew

In November 2020, a new research study, Starting Anew: The Rehabilitation of Child Survivors of the Holocaust in the Early Postwar Years, was launched online. The book examines the process of rehabilitation of child survivors of the Holocaust in several European countries and North America. Read more

"For the Sake of My People"

On 17 December 2020, the last day of the festival of Chanukah that marks the miraculous victory of the small Jewish stronghold in the Land of Israel against their mighty Greek occupiers, Yad Vashem held a special online symposium dedicated to Jewish Rescue during the Holocaust. Read more

No Balm for their Wounds

As part of the "Zoom into Research" ongoing online lecture series presented by Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research, Prof. Dan Stone of Royal Holloway, University of London, gave a fascinating presentation of a topic relatively under-investigated in Holocaust historiography: "Elderly Survivors in the Wake of the Holocaust." Read more

"White Coats in the Ghetto"

During the summer months, White Coats in the Ghetto: Jewish Medicine in Poland during the Holocaust – a research study by Dr. Miriam Offer, Senior Lecturer in the Holocaust Studies Program at Western Galilee College – was published in English. The book traces the work of the medical staff and leaders of the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust, and how they dealt with the professional, moral and logistical challenges in the fields of medicine and ethics, within a broad historical... Read more

Rescue by Jews in Warsaw

Many Jews in hiding on the "Aryan side" in Warsaw assumed additional danger by helping their families, friends, and complete strangers, taking far greater risks than Poles who were helping Jews, since they were not being hunted on the streets.  Read more

An Unbreakable Bond: Witnesses, Educators and the Generations to Come

Years before Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies opened its doors in the early 1990s, educational staff realized the importance – if not centrality – of firsthand witness testimony in Holocaust teaching and commemoration.On the eve of his retirement from Yad Vashem after more than thirty years of dedication to the development of impactful educational seminars across the globe, Ephraim Kaye, Director of the Jewish World and International Seminars Department at... Read more

The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw (Part III)

In this final segment of an interview regarding the English-language version "The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw," Academic Editor Dr. Tikva Fatal-Knaani recalls some of the challenges and unusual discoveries she encountered while working on the project. How did the ideological and political streams that were popular in the ghetto affect their overall outlook on the plight of the Jews during the war? The ideology and political way of thinking often led to attacks on the Jewish leadership,... Read more

The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw (Part II)

The creators of the underground press Sought to correct injustices, and presented the Jewish public with a purpose and content for its existence. With the discovery of the "Oyneg Shabes" Archives and other sources, Yad Vashem experts began the arduous work of deciphering and cataloguing the underground press from the Warsaw ghetto. Dr. Tikva Fatal-Knaani, the Academic Editor of the research project "The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw," gives us a fascinating overview of the project's... Read more

The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw

Established by the occupying Germans in October 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was the largest of its kind during WWII, with some 450,000 Jewish men, women and children incarcerated there at its peak in extremely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Within the ghetto, their lives oscillated in the desperate struggle between survival and death from disease or starvation. Yet the walls of the ghetto and the guards surrounding them could not silence the educational, religious and cultural activity of... Read more

The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center

In May 2020, a formal agreement was signed between Yad Vashem and the David and Fela Shapell Family Foundation to secure the Founding Gift of the new David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, which is currently under construction. The David and Fela Shapell Family Foundation has been a longstanding partner of Yad Vashem for many decades. Over several decades, the Shapell Family have been active members of the American Society for Yad Vashem, supporting important development at Yad... Read more

Restoration through Investigation: "The White Bus"

"The White Bus" at Yad Vashem stands as a tangible testimony to the rescue story of the Red Cross during the Holocaust. It recently underwent vital restoration work based on thorough investigation efforts by dedicated Museum staff. Read more

On the Right Side of the Law

Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies is now well-recognized for its creative, accurate and tailor-made programs for teachers of the Holocaust around the world. Lately, however, it has expanded its range to target other professionals, including opinion-shapers, clergy, and members of the security forces. Read more

Commemoration from a Personal Perspective: News from the Library

Among its recent acquisitions, the Yad Vashem Library – the most comprehensive collection of published material about the Holocaust – counts two unique publications that highlight the wide variety of ways in which private individuals have dedicated themselves to bringing new narratives to a wider audience. One is a personal quest in search of the wartime fate of a relative the author discovered by chance; and the other is the fruit of an unusual endeavor to bring Holocaust commemoration to... Read more

Tackling Antisemitism Through Holocaust Education

Yad Vashem has long understood the need to educate about the Holocaust as a tool for combatting antisemitism. Today, as the definitive source for Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education, it is working tirelessly not only to ensure that the memory and meanings of the Holocaust continue to be relevant, but also to use its comprehensive knowledge and carefully developed educational tools to fight contemporary forms of antisemitism. Read more

Graduate Spotlight

"It is important to remember and be inspired by the bravery of those who saved others during the Holocaust. I view the Jews who saved other Jews as great heroes. They helped save the final remnant of the Jewish people, who would later rebuild this great nation." Esther Debora Reiss-Mosel, b. 1938, Heiloo, Holland Read more

Children in the Holocaust

To mark International Children's Day, and to answer the high demand for material on the experience of Jewish children during the Shoah, Yad Vashem launched a new online exhibition in November 2019, entitled "Children in the Holocaust." The exhibition features children's toys, games, artworks, letters, diaries and albums, all carefully preserved in Yad Vashem's Collections, and which appear across the Yad Vashem website as part of other online presentations on a variety of... Read more

Yad Vashem Studies: The Cutting Edge of Holocaust Research

In January 2020, Senior Historian at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research Dr. David Silberklang ended his position as Editor-in-Chief of Yad Vashem Studies, Yad Vashem's flagship academic journal. In a special interview for Yad Vashem Jerusalem, Dr. Silberklang reflected upon more than two decades in the position, and how the journal has become the leading source for research papers on Holocaust-related topics: Read more

Jewish DPs in Italy after Liberation

From October-December 2019, Dr. Chiara Renzo was the recipient of the fellowship supported by The Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Chair for the Study of Racism, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust, established at Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Studies. Her research focused on Jewish Holocaust survivors, who between 1943 and 1951 temporarily lived as displaced persons (DPs) in the refugee camps of Italy. Read more

"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

"Searching for relatives and friends after the war was a first impulse for many of the survivors. It was almost the natural thing to do – to find out if anyone had survived. Institutions like the International Tracing Service (ITS) evolved over time and were of great use to the survivors, but it seems that the survivors themselves went on their own journey – physically traversing through Europe to find out if anyone had survived as well as contacting anyone they could think of... 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

Familiarity and Murder

In certain Nazi-controlled areas of Europe, the persecution of Jews by people who knew them often did not begin with the murder, but rather was part of the landscape of the developing persecution. Children in particular suffered at the hands of the former playmates and teachers. In occupied France before the mass murders began, Jewish businessmen were denounced by their French rivals in order to ensure that their companies be shut down or "Aryanized." In Hungary, before the wave of... 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

Memorial Ceremony Marks 75 Years since the Jewish Revolt at Sobibor

On 9 October 2018, a memorial ceremony and event was held at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, commemorating 75 years since the Jewish revolt at former German Nazi death camp Sobibor. The memorial event took place at the Yad Vashem Synagogue, in the presence of Holocaust survivors and next generations, as well as the Ambassadors of the Netherlands and Slovakia in Israel and diplomatic representatives from Poland and Russia 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

Engraved on a Silver Platter

Until recently, the name of six-year-old Michoel Hesheles was one of the more than one million names of Shoah victims that are still missing from Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims Names. However, when 84-year-old Yoske Badichi, a longtime active volunteer in Yad Vashem's Names Recovery Project, came to Jerusalem in the summer of 2017 to participate in his great-nephew's son's recent Pidyon Haben ceremony – whereby a Jewish firstborn son is "redeemed"... Read more

Flashes of Memory: Photography During the Holocaust

On 24 January 2018, a new exhibition, entitled "Flashes of Memory: Photography during the Holocaust," opened at Yad Vashem to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Displayed throughout this exhibition are some 1,500 photographs and 13 films created during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, the Jews in the ghettos and the Allied liberators, as well as original newspaper clippings, albums, diaries, and a number of original cameras from the period. 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