Yad Vashem

31°46′27″N 35°10′32″E / 31.77417°N 35.17556°E / 31.77417; 35.17556

Yad Vashem
View of Yad Vashem
Established1953
LocationMount Herzl, Jerusalem
TypeThe Holocaust
WebsiteYad Vashem's official website

Yad Vashem[a] is a memorial site in Jerusalem for the victims of the Holocaust. It includes a museum, a school for teachers, and a library where archives are stored. The site is located in the Jerusalem Forest on the western slope of Mount Herzl. It is 804 meters (2,638 ft) above sea level.

Administration

In November 2008, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was appointed as Yad Vashem Council's chairman.[1] The Council's vice-chairman is Moshe Kantor.[2] Meanwhile, Elie Wiesel was the vice-chairman of the council until he died on July 2, 2016.[3] Yitzhak Arad was the vice-chairman until he died on May 6, 2021.[4]

Directorate

Yitzhak Arad was the directorate's chairman from 1972 to 1993, succeeded by Avner Shalev, the chairman until February 2021.[5] He was succeeded by Dani Dayan in August 2021.[6]

The directorate's members are Avraham Duvdevani, Boleslaw Goldman, Dalit Stauber, Daniel Atar, Dudi Zilbershlag, Michal Cohen, Shlomit Kasirer, Shoshana Weinshall, Vera H. Golovensky, Yehiel Leket, Yossi Ahimeir, Yossi Katribas and Zehava Tanne.[7] Former deceased members were Baruch Shub, Matityahu Drobles and Moshe Ha-Elion.

The CEO is Tzvika Fayirizen.[8] The Director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research is Iael Nidam-Orvieto.[9] The chair for Holocaust studies is Dan Michman, and Prof. Dina Porat is the Senior Academic Advisor,[10] She also served as Chief Historian between the years 2011-2022.[7] preceded by Prof. Yehuda Bauer.[11]

Museum

Opening

Yad Vashem's building on the Mount of Remembrance was completed in 1957. Its first exhibition, opened in 1958, focused on documents about the Holocaust. The second exhibition, opened in 1959, presented paintings from the camps and Holocaust Ghettos.[12][13]

Expansion

In 1993, planning began for a larger and more advanced museum. The new building, designed by Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, consists of a long corridor connected to 10 exhibition halls, each dedicated to a stage of the Holocaust.

New museum

The new museum was dedicated on March 15, 2005 in the presence of leaders from 40 states, and then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. President of Israel Moshe Katzav said that Yad Vashem served as "an important signpost to all of humankind, a signpost that warns how short the distance is between hatred and murder, between racism and genocide".[14]

The museum combines the stories of 90 Holocaust victims and survivors, presenting 2,500+ items, including artwork and letters. Old displays about Nazism and antisemitism have been replaced by those focusing on the stories of Jewish victims.[13] In April 2019, Yad Vashem started a new collection center for millions of artifacts.[15][16]

Archives

The Archive is Yad Vashem's oldest department. The best known items are the photos and the Pages of Testimonies. The latter is a database of Holocaust victims and survivors. Yad Vashem has also gained access to the database of the International Tracing Service of Bad Arolsen of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Architecture

The first Yad Vashem's architect was Munio Weinraub, who worked on it from 1943 until the 1960s.[17] The new Holocaust History Museum, designed by Moshe Safdie, is shaped like a triangular concrete prism cutting through the landscape, illuminated by a 200-meter-long (656 ft) skylight. Visitors follow a route through underground galleries branching off from the main hall.[18] Safdie is also the architect behind the Children's Memorial[b] and the Deportees Memorial. The gates were designed by the sculptor David Palombo (1920–66).

Hall of Names

The Hall of Names is a memorial to the 6,000,000+ Holocaust victims. The main hall has two cones: one ten meters high, with a reciprocal well-like cone excavated into the underground rock, its base filled with water. On the upper cone is a display of 600 photos of Holocaust victims,[c] reflected in the water at the lower cone's bottom, commemorating unknown victims.

Surrounding the platform is the circular repository, housing the 2,700,000+ Pages of Testimony collected to date.[19] Since the 1950s, Yad Vashem has collected 110,000+ audio, video, and Holocaust survivors' testimonies. As the survivors age, the program has been expanded to visiting survivors in their homes, to tape interviews. Adjoining the hall is a study area with a computerized data bank where visitors can search for Holocaust victims' names online.

Righteous Among the Nations

Main article: Righteous Among the Nations

One of Yad Vashem's tasks is to honor non-Jews who risked their lives or liberty to save Jews. A special independent commission, headed by a retired Supreme Court justice, was founded. The commission members, including historians, lawyers, public figures, and Holocaust survivors, evaluate each case according to a well-defined set of criteria and regulations.

The Righteous receive a certificate of honor and a medal, and their names are commemorated in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations,[21] on the Mount of Remembrance. As of 2021, 27,921+ persons have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, with 555 of them recognized in that year.[22]

Yad Vashem Studies

Yad Vashem Studies is a peer-reviewed semi-annual scholarly journal on the Holocaust. Published since 1957, it has both English and Hebrew versions.[23]

  • Garden of the Righteous among the Nations
  • The Eternal Flame Hall
  • Children's Memorial Hall
  • Memorial to the Jewish children murdered by the Nazis
  • Hall of Names
  • Cattle car memorial
  • Valley of the Destroyed Communities
  • Janusz Korczak and the children, memorial

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hebrew: יד ושם
  2. ↑ Also known as the Monument to the children in Yad Vashem
  3. ↑ Along with the fragments of Pages of Testimony
  4. ↑ A Polish social worker who smuggled more than 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto[20]

References

  1. ↑ "Rabbi Israel Meir Lau Appointed Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council". Yad Vashem. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
  2. ↑ Moshe Kantor on Yad Vashem website
  3. ↑ Yad Vashem mourns the loss of a dear friend and colleague, Holocaust survivor Professor Elie Wiesel, on Yad Vashem website
  4. ↑ Yad Vashem Mourns the Passing of Renowned Holocaust Survivor, Historian and Former Yad Vashem Chairman, Dr. Yitzhak Arad (1926-2021), on Yad Vashem website
  5. ↑ "Three Decades Dedicated to Shoah Commemoration". Yad Vashem. August 22, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  6. ↑ "Vowing to reject Holocaust 'distortion,' Dani Dayan appointed head of Yad Vashem". The Times of Israel. August 22, 2021. Retrieved August 23, 2021.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Yad Vashem Magazine. Volume 80. June 2016
  8. ↑ Tzvika Fayirizen Appointed as Director General of Yad Vashem, Yad Vashem website, October 21, 2021
  9. ↑ About Dr. Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Yad Vashem website
  10. ↑ Professor Dina Porat on Yad Vashem website
  11. ↑ Professor Yehuda Bauer
  12. ↑ Bella Gutterman, Yad Vashem: 60 years of remembrance, documentation, research, and education - the chapter regarding the 1950s, p. 93 (Yad Vashem, 2013, in Hebrew)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chris McGreal (March 15, 2005). "'This is ours and ours alone'". The Guardian. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
  14. ↑ Kofi Annan commented at the opening, "The number of Holocaust survivors who are still with us is dwindling fast. Our children are growing up just as rapidly. They are beginning to ask their first questions about injustice. What will we tell them? Will we say, 'That's just the way the world is'? Or will we say instead, 'We are trying to change things—to find a better way'? Let this museum stand as a testimony that we are striving for a better way. Let Yad Vashem inspire us to keep striving, as long as the darkest dark stalks the face of the earth." Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel Archived May 6, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  15. ↑ About the new collection center, Yad Vashem website
  16. ↑ Amanda Borschel-Dan. "Yad Vashem to break ground on new artifacts center on Holocaust Remembrance Day". The Times of Israel. Retrieved March 27, 2019.
  17. ↑ Esther Zandberg (January 31, 2014). "Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem Was Already Being Planned in 1942". Haaretz. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
  18. ↑ Ser, Sam. "New Yad Vashem museum to emphasize 'human story'". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on May 25, 2013. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
  19. ↑ What are Pages of Testimony, on Yad Vashem website
  20. ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Irena Sendler (1910–2008)
  21. ↑ "Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide – The Yad Vashem Garden of the Righteous". Gariwo. Archived from the original on March 10, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  22. ↑ "Names of Righteous by Country". Yad Vashem. 1 January 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2022.
  23. ↑ "Yad Vashem Studies". The International Institute for Holocaust Research. Retrieved June 14, 2025.
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