Plan your Visit to Yad Vashem
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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.

70 Years of Remembering and Building: Holocaust Survivors and the State of Israel

The Central Theme for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018

In his later years, Abba Kovner, Holocaust survivor, poet, partisan, and one of the leaders of the Vilna ghetto underground, wrote of his fellow survivors rebuilding their lives:

“Those people… could have resignedly settled down where they were and tried to restore their ruined lives. I would not have been surprised had those same survivors become bands of thieves, robbers and murderers; had they done so, they might well have been the most humane and just of their kind."

Kovner’s comments reflect his wonderment at the survivors’ rehabilitative and creative energies. The fact that they were able to build and create after all the suffering and trauma that was their lot during the Holocaust is not to be taken for granted.