Plan your Visit to Yad Vashem
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Sun-Thurs: 09:00-16:00
Fridays and holiday eves: 09:00-13:00
Saturday and Jewish holidays – Closed

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Yad Vashem is open to the general public, free of charge. All visits to Yad Vashem must be reserved in advance.

Women in the Holocaust

Dear Readers,

“The future historian will have to dedicate a page to the Jewish woman in the war. She will fill an important page in Jewish history for her courage and resilience. Thanks to her, thousands of families managed to survive the horror of those days...”
Emanuel Ringelblum, June 1942

The reality of World War II and the Holocaust forced women to cope with new, unforeseen circumstances and fundamental dilemmas, compelling them to make difficult and often fateful decisions. They did their best to protect their families, to obtain food, to find work, and to defend their children—sometimes even paying the unbearable price of separation. Women took on a number of roles at that time: they ran public soup kitchens and children’s dorms, they worked as teachers and caretakers, as doctors and nurses, and they even joined partisan groups and underground resistance movements.

The current issue provides a platform for the unique voice of women during the Holocaust: a review of a gender studies approach to the female experience in the Holocaust; a discussion of the exciting lives of Lena Küchler-Silberman and Rachel Auerbach, and their rescue and relief efforts during the Holocaust; and an account of the female inmates of the death-camps Ravensbrück and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Editorial staff
Spring Issue 2017

Holocaust Hero: Lena Küchler-Silberman

Holocaust Hero: Lena Küchler-Silberman

When a mother leaves home, the whole house is turned upside down. This premise has served as the basis of a reality series, in which two families swap mothers, changing everything about their respective homes including rules, routine and restrictions. The assumption was that while switching fathers would change little, the moment a family is assigned a new, surrogate mother nothing about the household...
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The Prisoners of the Women’s Concentration Camp, Ravensbrück

The Prisoners of the Women’s Concentration Camp, Ravensbrück

Oh, my brother, once there will be the day when no roll call will keep us!
Gates will be opened wide and the great, the free world will embrace us.
And then we concentration camp inmates will walk on wide streets.
But the others are waiting for us.
And whoever sees us, sees the deep lines written on our faces by the suffering,
Sees the signs of our mental and bodily torture, which...
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Interview with Professor Dalia Ofer, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Interview with Professor Dalia Ofer, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Professor Dalia Ofer is a scholar of the Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Many of her studies explore aspects of women and gender during the Holocaust.  We met with her to discuss Holocaust studies from a gender perspective, and to address the female experience during the Holocaust.
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Rachel Auerbach and the Soup Kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto - A Learning Environment

Rachel Auerbach and the Soup Kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto - A Learning Environment

 Rachel Auerbach and the Soup Kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto is one of a series of Hebrew films produced this year as part of the ongoing project “Visual Learning Space—Films for Holocaust Education” (Toolbox). The five films comprising this series document the covert activities of the Oneg Shabbat archivists, telling the tale of the Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto from the...
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The Origins of the Birkenau Camp in Light of the Source Materials - Igor Bartosik, Lukasz Martyniak and Piotr Setkiewicz

The Origins of the Birkenau Camp in Light of the Source Materials - Igor Bartosik, Lukasz Martyniak and Piotr Setkiewicz

Igor Bartosik, Lukasz Martyniak and Piotr Setkiewicz
The Origins of the Birkenau Camp in Light of the Source Materials
Oświęcim: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2017
ISBN: 978-83-7704-201-4 Many iconic images surface when thinking about Auschwitz-Birkenau, particularly the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign, as well as the guard towers, railway tracks, former prisoner barracks, barbed...
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