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Newsletter #35, April 2015
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What's New
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Holocaust Remembrance Day 2015
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The central ceremony markingHolocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day was held at Yad Vashem on April 16, 2015 in the presence of the President of the State of Israel, the Prime Minister, dignitaries, survivors and children of survivors and their families. A special mini-site has been uploaded which includes the torchlighter stories and films, photos from the event and educational information about this year's theme: "The Anguish of Liberation and the Return to Life: 70 Years Since the End of WWII." Commemorative ceremonies took place on the Mount of Remembrance throughout the following day, including the wreath-laying ceremony and the recitation of Holocaust victims' names in the Hall of Remembrance. The International School for Holocaust Studies ran educational activities for youth, and in the afternoon, Holocaust survivors and hundreds of young people took part in the ceremony for youth movements in the Edmond J. Safra Lecture Hall.
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This year, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, for the first time ever, the general public was offered “behind-the-scenes” glimpses into selected fields of specialized Yad Vashem expertise. This included first-hand illustrations of the preservation of rare Holocaust-related documents; viewing exceptional photographs and artifacts; presentations about Shoah-themed cinema; and discovering how Yad Vashem has utilized advanced technologies to make its vast resources accessible literally around the globe.
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New Exhibition: Children in the Holocaust
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The new exhibition, "Stars Without a Heaven - Children in the Holocaust" opened on Sunday, April 12, 2015 in the Yad Vashem Exhibitions Pavilion. The exhibition provides touching and enlightening expression to the lives of 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust and those who survived. On display are items from Yad Vashem's Artifacts, Art and Archives Collections. In addition, students from the Department of Ceramics and Glass Design of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem created works from glass, porcelain and ceramics and students from the Department of Visual Communication Design of the Holon Institute of Technology-HIT created short animated clips, based on survivor testimonies, especially for the exhibition. These works were created to help illustrate the personal stories of the children where, due to the wartime circumstances of their childhood, little or no materials remained.
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Spotlight on the Web
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The Death March to Volary
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On 20 January 1945, approximately 1,000 female Jewish prisoners were evacuated from the Schlesiersee (today Sława) camp in Upper Silesia, western Poland, a region annexed to Germany. These women were forced on a death march in a southwesterly direction. On the way, the prisoners passed through other camps, and more women were added to the march. They walked for 106 days of through snow and icy winds, hungry, frightened, sick and humiliated. Of the approximately 1,300 women who marched to Volary, only some 350 survived.
The new video-based online exhibition "The Death March to Volary," sheds light on this little known chapter of the Holocaust. It is based on the most updated research on the death marches, testimonies of survivors and US Army veterans, and documentation from the trial of death march commander Alois Dorr.
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Jews in the Red Army, 1941-1945
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From 1941 to 1945, between 350,000 and 500,000 Jews served in various roles in the Red Army. The accounts of 100 Jewish men and wormen in the Red Army are included in a special online project highlighting those who received formal recognition, primarily as "Heroes of the Soviet Union," for their military achievements. These were officers and privates, tank crew members and pilots, translators and doctors – men and women of all ages. The stories tell about their prewar experiences as members of the intelligentsia, professional military men or factory workers and – for those who survived the war – their experiences of their postwar life. Such an approach allows for a better understanding of the effect the war had on Jewish Red Army personnel that help cast light on the Jewish identity of these people and their varying reactions to the Holocaust.
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Names Recovery
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Cousins Discover Each Other
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In March, two cousins who discovered each other thanks to Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, met for the first time in an emotional meeting. Tatiana Zuckerman (66) came especially from Moscow to take part in an educator's seminar at the International School for Holocaust Studies. Tatiana believed that she had almost no extended family, and that apart from her mother, Rachel Perelman (Milenki) (87), a survivor of the Minsk Ghetto and Auschwitz, and a very small number of distant cousins, no family members had survived the Holocaust. During her visit, Tatiana asked for assistance searching Yad Vashem's databases, and to her surprise she found a Page of Testimony commemorating Tzeril Milennki, her grandmother who was murdered in the Minsk ghetto. The Page of Testimony was submitted in 2011 by Shalhevet Ziv (of Kfar Sava, Israel), a grandniece of Tzeril. Yad Vashem staff helped Tatiana locate Shalhevet and through searches on Facebook were able to connect Tatiana and Shalhevet.
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New Publications
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Fighting for Her People
Zivia Lubetkin, 1914–1978
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by Bella Gutterman
Zivia Lubetkin’s determined and persuasive personality was formed during her childhood in the small shtetl of Byten, Poland. Standing out in the training communes of the Zionist youth movement Freiheit, she became one of its foremost activists. With the onset of WWII, she turned into an inspired and courageous leader in the Zionist underground in the territories of the Soviet Union and in the Warsaw Ghetto as well as during the Polish uprisings, and, later still, in the efforts to rehabilitate Holocaust survivors. Together with her beloved husband, Yitzhak Zuckermann, she established Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot and dedicated herself both to her life’s mission and to her family. Available in Yad Vashem's online store
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It Kept Us Alive
Humor in the Holocaust
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by Chaya Ostrower
Humor and laughter can help strengthen and heal mental and physical health, but can it assist in dealing with a trauma as severe as the Holocaust? This book demonstrates how humor helped in coping with the terrible reality. Interviews with survivors describe horrific events, intertwined with macabre humor. Humor during the Holocaust did not lessen the objective experiences but alleviated the emotional response to the horrors. The author classifies the types of humor, and studies their functions in the ghettos, concentration camps and death camps. Included in the book are humorous ditties, songs and cabaret sketches, as well as the unique stories of two ghetto clowns. Available for purchase online.
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News Highlights
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Looking Back at the Holocaust, Through a Child’s Eyes, in The New York Times
A day of reflection and tribute as Israel remembers the Holocaust, in The Times of Israel
6 candles, 6 stories of anguish and liberation, on Ynet.com
Yad Vashem seeks women named in Holocaust survivor's Haggadah, on Ynet.com
Pre-Holocaust ID cards of thousands of Jews discovered in Lithuania, on JNS.org
Not Just Their Names, in The Jerusalem Post
Giving Yad Vashem to the World, in The Cleveland Jewish News
Remembering her mother’s Holocaust agony, daughter rekindles a search, in JTA
Yad Vashem: Israel's Virtual Historical Healing Space, in Forbes
IDF General Staff holds meeting at Yad Vashem ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, in The Jerusalem Post
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