Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem

"With me are 6 million accusers." Gideon Hausner, Chief Prosecuting Attorney, Eichmann trial

On 15 December 1961, Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by an Israeli court after being found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity.

During the trial, Eichmann's personal responsibility was established for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to the death camps, Auschwitz in particular. The judges noted Eichmann's determination to continue at all costs the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz especially towards the end of 1944, on the verge of the collapse of the Third Reich, even in opposition to the views of his superiors.

Watch "A Living Record" which brings the voices of 3 participants in the trial-Gabriel Bach, a member of the prosecution team, Mickey Gilad (Michael Goldman) an investigative officer in Bureau 06, and Israel Gutman, a witness at the trial. Documentary footage from the trial provides the historical background to their unique and moving experiences and perspectives. https://youtu.be/Egvg5URQS94

Explore our online exhibition about the Eichmann trial: https://bit.ly/3FadZga

Holocaust survivor Yisrael Mei-Tal set sail from Europe on 13 December 1947 aboard the Kaf-tet beNovember, a clandestine immigration ship carrying approximately 700 immigrants.

He documented his family's journey aboard the ship and developed two reels of film while still at sea; once dry, he wound them around his leg to hide them from the British when they were taken off the ship.

Discover his story:
https://bit.ly/3UEde4L

At a planning meeting on 30 November 1997, architect Moshe Safdie presented plans for the new Holocaust History museum.
Here you can see him pointing at a topographical map of the Mount of Remembrance.

Click here to explore a current map of the Yad Vashem campus on the Mount of Remembrance and use it to plan your next visit to Yad Vashem https://bit.ly/3FGtZID

The Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem is a is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust.

Memorial candles, a customary Jewish tradition to remember the dead, are reflected infinitely in a dark and somber space, creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament. The names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin can be heard in the background.

The cornerstone of the Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem was laid on 17 November 1985. View photos of its construction.

The N**is sealed Warsaws' Jews inside what would be the largest ghetto in N**i occupied Europe on 16 November 1940.

380,000 Jews were forced inside; over 80,000 Jews died as a result of the appalling conditions, overcrowding and starvation.

Learn more about the Warsaw ghetto through testimonies, artifacts, documents and personal stories: https://bit.ly/3DBzPse

The names of over 5,000 Jewish communities that were destroyed or barely survived in the Holocaust are engraved on the walls of the Valley of the Communities

Each name recalls a Jewish community which existed for hundreds of years; for the inhabitants, each community constituted an entire world. Today, in most cases, nothing remains but the name.

The Valley of the Communities was dedicated 30 years ago in October 1992.

Discover the stories of featured communities before, during and after the Holocaust: https://bit.ly/3Tz9jqh

Take a virtual tour of the Valley: https://bit.ly/3Fl28O4

Explore these photographs of the Valley of the Communities from its initial planning stages through to its completion.

"Love life and don’t be afraid of death.
Believe in God and a better future."

This message was inscribed in Ester Goldstein's album by her friend Bella Lassore; one month later, Ester was deported to Riga on 26 October 1942

View the album here: https://bit.ly/3s7G9SY

Feige Einhorn became Janina Stabrowska on 20 October 1942 when the Generalgouvernement issued her new ID papers.
>> https://bit.ly/3g0ENqx

Janina lived in the A***n sector of Warsaw for almost two years, until the Polish Uprising in August 1944, after which the deportation of Warsaw's Polish population began. She was one of those deported from Warsaw at this time. She was loaded onto a cattle car, and taken to a forced labor camp in Berlin, where she worked in an AEG factory. Janina survived the heavy bombardments of the city, and was liberated by the Red Army.

This is the false ID that enabled her to survive under an assumed identity

Dr. Mojzis Nahartabi taught Arabic in Theresienstadt by translating words from Hebrew to Arabic and vice versa. Many words described the harsh reality of their lives, such as “suffering”, “poverty” & “fear.

A professor of Semitic languages, he taught Hebrew and Arabic in the belief that the Jews would eventually be free and would then go to the Land of Israel.

On 19 October 1944, he was murdered in Auschwitz.

Read his moving story:

English https://bit.ly/3ExJAdh

Aharon Jakobson (wearing a white shirt in the center of the photo), dances with a Torah scroll along with fellow members of the Zionist Youth Front during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah in the Lodz ghetto.

Aharon Jakobson had been incarcerated in the Łódź ghetto, together with all the city's Jews in March 1940. He created the "Front of the Wilderness Generation" youth movement in the ghetto, whose original core group comprised graduates from the Zionist-leaning Jewish professional school. Their mission was the unification of the Zionist youth movements with the aim of centralizing activities in the fields of welfare, education and defense against the negative influences in the ghetto. The members, who numbered some 400 members, were not asked to abandon their political affiliations, just to defer their aspirations until after the war.

Aharon was later murdered at Gleiwitz, a sub-camp of Auschwitz

Learn more >> https://bit.ly/3CfeJzp

Some 300 prisoners escaped the Sobibor death camp where approximately 250,000 Jews were murdered on 14 October 1943; most of them were recaptured.

This is a blueprint of the Sobibor death camp.

Learn more about Jewish armed resistance and rebellions during the Holocaust >> https://bit.ly/3fQAAp1

The Jewish holiday of begins this evening.

These photos, taken in 1941 in the Lodz ghetto, attest to the fact that even under the oppressive conditions of the ghetto, Jews observed the holiday as an act of faith & resistance.

So too, in Warsaw; a full year after being confined to the ghetto, Jews queued for hours for the opportunity to sit in a sukkah built on a top-floor balcony & to make the blessing over a set of the four species (lulav & etrog) smuggled in from Switzerland.

Learn more about celebrating Sukkot before, during and after the Holocaust >> https://bit.ly/3Ekr9Zm

Following the Kristallnacht pogrom Charlotte Salomon found refuge in southern France; there she created an autobiographical illustrated musical play entitled "Life? or Theater?" comprising over 700 paintings.

On 7 October 1943, she was deported from Drancy to Auschwitz, along with her husband, Alexander Nagler.

26-year-old Charlotte, who was 5 months pregnant, was murdered upon arrival.

View her work >> https://bit.ly/3SGLoVB

On the eve of Yom Kippur 1944, Livia Koralek delivered a sermon to the women imprisoned in the Parschnitz concentration camp, encouraging them to give something that exists forever and never ends: "love." Some disintegrated fragments of her sermon are pictured below.

Just hours before Yom Kippur began, she said:

"I ask God, on behalf of all of us, to forgive us for having offended our parents, relatives, siblings, and our friends. We ask God to forgive us on behalf of our loved ones, because we are far from all our loved ones and cannot ask them to forgive us.

I remember that our Rabbi in the town of Gyor gathered us before he was sent to Auschwitz, and here is what he said, in part: 'It is not the place that sanctifies the man, but man who sanctifies the place.'

On this holy day, we are being put to a test. We must observe the commandment 'Thou shalt not steal'. Each of us receives a tiny ration and must be content with it.

I feel that God will hear our prayers, wipe the tears from our eyes, and answer us with the words from the prayer service: 'I have forgiven you'."

Learn Livia's fate and discover more stories related to Yom Kippur on our online exhibition "Marking the New Year: From our Collections" >> https://bit.ly/33dmMLx

During the Holocaust, Menachem Shimoni (formerly Emil Neumann) was imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While there, Shimoni created a calendar from memory for the Jewish year 5705 (1944-45).

The calendar included all the festivals and special days and the weekly Torah portion, which served many religious prisoners in the camp who tried to remain observant despite the inhuman conditions prevailing there.

In addition to the Jewish calendar, Menachem Shimoni also wrote down a special Jewish prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy: "U'Netane Tokef."

Discover more stories, artifacts, and photos of how Jews marked the high holidays before, during, and after the Holocaust on our online exhibition here >> https://bit.ly/3E9xDaV

"What Happened at Babi Yar : a Yad Vashem Podcast"

On September 28, 1941, a German edict was issued ordering the Jews of Kiev and of the surrounding area to gather some clothes and belongings, and report at an intersection not far from a local freight train station.

Instead of being deported, however, they were marched to Babi Yar and shot over the course of two days (29-30 September). According to a contemporary report, the German forces on hand murdered 33,771 Jews. Dina Pronicheva is one of the very few to survive this horrific event. This is her story.

Listen to this podcast episode here >> https://bit.ly/3BWtBDB

80 photographs of Jews murdered at Babi Yar

On 29-30 September 1941, approximately 33,771 Jewish men, women and children from Kiev and the surrounding areas were murdered at Babi Yar by Einsatzgruppe C soldiers with the assistance of local collaborators. Jews who managed to escape the massacre in September but were discovered in the ensuing months, were also brought to Babi Yar and murdered.

Our online exhibit includes 80 photos and stories of the Jews murdered at Babi Yar. The photos were submitted to Yad Vashem together with Pages of Testimony containing the names and brief biographical information of the victims. Each Page is a mute testament to the persecution of an entire Jewish community: Rabbis, teachers and pupils, traders and artisans, philosophers and scientists- and in many cases entire families.

In this moving exhibit we can see the faces and explore the stories of 80 of the Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered at a ravine called Babi Yar. Explore the exhibit here >> https://bit.ly/3kGVRSh

80 photographs of Jews murdered at Babi Yar In September 1941, the N**is and their collaborators murdered 33,771 Jews from Kiev at Babi Yar

On the eve of Rosh Hashana 1944, Naftali Stern wrote down the traditional Jewish prayers from memory while imprisoned in the Wolfsberg camp in Germany.

He inscribed the prayers on ripped up cement bags which he acquired by trading-in his valuable bread rations. Stern then hid the pages on his body until his liberation in 1945, and continued to pray from them each New Year.

Stern's wife and 4 young children were murdered at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
Discover dozens of additional stories highlighting how Jews observed the Jewish New Year before, during, and after the Holocaust on our online exhibition "Marking the New Year: From our Collections".

The exhibition explores this topic through survivor testimony, artifacts, photos, cards, prayer books, and more. Learn more here >> https://bit.ly/38q1BJd

To all of you who have joined, liked, shared and/or positively engaged with us over this past year, we want to wish you a happy and healthy New Year on behalf of the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Dani Dayan, and the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau.

Today, Yad Vashem held a tribute event in honor of Holocaust survivors who share their experiences, in which we expressed our gratitude to these cherished individuals for their important work, and wished them a happy and healthy New Year.

Holocaust survivors who tell their stories have undertaken the challenging and painful mission to revisit their traumatic past, and to share their personal experiences with school children, IDF soldiers, and visitors from Israel and abroad.

These first hand witness testimonies grant the younger generations a unique and historic opportunity to hear these personal, often unfathomable and profoundly human stories, and in turn, to pass them on. As Prof. Elie Wiesel once said: "Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness".

Deportation from Cologne to Theresienstadt in September 1942. Testimony of Ruth Herzka.

"People were taken away from us, but we never found out where they went..."

19 September 1942, Ruth Herzka was deported from Köln, Germany to the Theresienstadt ghetto. In her survivor testimony below, Ruth describes the horrid conditions of the deportation, and the journey she took during the Holocaust.

Watch her survivor testimony here >> https://youtu.be/MGiOF5ev1_Y

Deportation from Cologne to Theresienstadt in September 1942. Testimony of Ruth Herzka. Excerpt from the testimony of Ruth Herzka (born: Ruth Rosenbaum), describing her deportation from Cologne, the conditions during the trainride and the arriva...

80 years ago today, Theodor Herzl's daughter was deported to Terezin. Learn the story below:

10 September 1942, a transport left Vienna for Theresienstadt. Among the 1,000 Jewish deportees was Margarete Gertrude Neumann, the youngest child of Zionist visionary and founder of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl.

6 months later, Margarete Gertrude perished in the Theresienstadt ghetto. She is pictured below (2nd from the left) with her father, brother, and sister.

The deportation of millions of Jews by the N**is from various locations throughout Europe and into ghettos, camps and murder sites provided a key element in implementing “The Final Solution".

Yad Vashem's Shoah Deportation Database reconstructs over 1,500 transports that took place during the Holocaust. Learn more about this deportation, and explore the online database here >> https://bit.ly/3mO9MYc