Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) 2014, marks 70 years since 1944, a year of massive upheaval and significance during the Holocaust. The expression "on the edge", taken from Nathan Alterman's poem Joy of the Poor, very aptly expresses the feeling which prevailed that year among the Jews of Europe, who were in the throes of a double race on which their very lives depended. Events were occurring very swiftly, one after the other, raising serious questions in their wake.
Launched ahead of Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, this site features a variety of pedagogical materials for teaching this topic within the framework of Holocaust education, with a special focus on the fate of Hungarian Jewry - a tragic example of the swift and ruthless efficiency of the Germans and their local sympathisers during the latter period of the war.
The materials on this website discuss they contrasting events. The e-Newsletter contains articles and interviews concerning the Jews of Hungary who had been deported to Auschwitz – background articles, survivor interviews, interviews with historians and more.
The interactive map is a pedagogical tool that allows teachers to illustrate the unfolding events of 1944: the areas under German occupation are colored light brown, and the regions liberated by the Soviet army are in green. Seven locations are highlighted: Hungary, Budapest, Ungvar, and Auschwitz illustrate the height of the murder campaign, and Stanislaw, Radom and Nowogrodek, which were liberated in the spring-summer of 1944, represent the liberated areas. Stories from these places are presented by film clips that tell of the historical events that took place there, accompanied by testimonies, photographs and archival material. The films allow the students to become acquainted with the communities highlighted on the map, and thus with the complex Jewish world that was lost during the Shoah.
