Yad Vashem - Page 3
International Seminar on Holocaust Education at
Yad Vashem
(June 27, 2004 - Jerusalem) Dozens of educators will gather today at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies for its annual Summer Seminar, entitled “Teaching the Shoah and Antisemitism.” Thirty Eight participants from over ten countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, Ireland, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Lithuania, Serbia, Croatia and, for the first time, Macedonia will join Yad Vashem specialists and other lecturers from Israeli Universities to learn about approaches to teaching the Holocaust and antisemitism.
The seventeen-day program, sponsored by Asper International Programs in Holocaust Studies, The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and Yad Vashem, includes lectures on: “Jews, God and History,” “Reflection on the Phenomenon of Antisemitism in the Modern World,” “Using Technology in Teaching the Holocaust,” “Holocaust and Art,” “The Vatican and the Shoah - Post-Holocaust Christian Theology,” and “Confronting the Phenomenon of Holocaust Denial.” The seminar runs from June 27 - July 13 at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies.
Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies is responsible for Holocaust education in Israel and abroad. Activities provided by the School include study seminars, teacher training programs, curricula development, overseas programming and publications. Seminars for educators are offered in over 10 different languages.
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New Synagogue to be Inaugurated at Yad Vashem in Presence of Chief Rabbis
Showcases Judaica from Destroyed Synagogues in Europe
(June 6, 2005 - Jerusalem) As part of the new museum complex at Yad Vashem, a new Synagogue will be inaugurated Wednesday, June 8, 2005 at 17:00. The new Synagogue, designed by architect Moshe Safdie and the interior design firm Tamuz, will serve as a place where visitors can say kaddish for beloved departed ones, where individuals can gather in silent prayer or join a traditional minyan in the communal atmosphere of a synagogue, and as a monument to the destroyed synagogues of Europe. A special media preview will take place at 16:00. RSVP requested.
Thirty-one distinct items will be on display, including four Torah Arks, and various other Judaicia from throughout Europe. The four arks, all of which come from Romania, were brought to Yad Vashem with the support of the late Prof. Nicolae Cajal, then president of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania and with the backing of the Romanian government. In 1998, Yehudit Inbar, Director of the Museums Division and Haviva Peled Carmeli, Senior Artifacts Curator, traveled throughout Romania to trace what was left of a once thriving Jewish community. They visited, inter alia, Bucharest, Barlad, Radauti, Cluj, Timisoara, Iasi, Dorohoi and Constanta synagogues and found a wealth of Judaica and synagogue furnishings in synagogues hermetically sealed since the Holocaust. The remnants, discovered in pieces throughout Romania, arrived at Yad Vashem in November 1999. Yad Vashem’s restorers labored to fit the pieces back together; while at the same time endeavoring to preserve the state in which the items were discovered.
Among the items discovered was an Ark that was found in a local Romanian’s home who was using it as a clothes closet, the Torah Ark of the Apple Merchants Association Synagogue in Iasi, and the unraveling Torah Ark Curtain from Cluj. The main, functioning Torah Ark’s façade is from Barlad, Romania. In addition, there are ritual articles from Poland, Greece, Transnistria, Germany and Slovakia.
The inauguration ceremony will take place in the presence of Rabbi Yona Metzger, Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Rishon LeZion Chief Rabbi of Israel, Isaac Herzog MK, Minister of Housing and Construction, Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American Society for Yad Vashem, Marilyn and Barry Rubenstien, of the USA, the donors of the new Synagogue and Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate. The event will take place in the Square of Hope at Yad Vashem.
During the course of the evening, a Torah Scroll that survived the Holocaust will be dedicated. The Scroll was discovered in a barn in Wengrow near Lublin in Poland by a Polish farmer who gave it to an Israeli who visited there during the Communist area. The Scroll was discovered in pieces, but was repaired with the generous help of Allan and Sylvie Green, of France.
The Nazis destroyed thousands of synagogues and study-houses during the Holocaust. On Kristallnacht alone, more than 1,000 synagogues were burnt or destroyed.
“The Yad Vashem synagogue will serve as a memorial to the destroyed places of worship of European Jewry. It will be a testimonial to the indestructible faith, the rich spiritual world of European Jewry and the extraordinary will of the Jewish people to survive, to remember and to rebuild,” said Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate.
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Righteous Among the Nations Ceremony at Yad Vashem
Righteous Among the Nations from Poland and Holland to be recognized
( Jerusalem) The ceremony posthumously honoring three Righteous Among the Nations took place at Yad Vashem June 1, 2005. The awards were bestowed upon Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska, who rescued three Jews in Poland during the Holocaust, and Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort from Holland who rescued six people during the war.
The ceremony was conducted in Hebrew, Polish and Dutch. Kazimierz Laski, one of the survivors from Poland arrived from Austria along with family and friends of the survivors and the rescuers. Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska’s and Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort’s children received the awards on behalf of their late parents, from Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Professor Szewach Weiss.
The ceremony took place in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska
From the Fall of 1940 until September 1942, Anna Wolfowicz and her daughter Irena lived in the house of Anna’s father, Dr. Tendler in the Ghetto of Zelechov, which is near Garvolin in Poland. In September 1942, at the time of the liquidation of the Zelechov Ghetto, the grandfather was murdered and Anna and Irena fled to Warsaw and found a hiding place in a Women’s Shelter with the aid of a school friend of Anna’s - Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska from Czestochowa who worked at the shelter.
Zofia hid Anna and her daughter in the Women’s Shelter for two years and also helped Kazimierz Laski, Irena’s boyfriend - and eventual husband - to acquire forged Aryan papers and a hiding place in their basement in Warsaw.
In the Fall of 1944, with the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the Shelter was closed and Anna was moved to a forced Labor camp, and managed to survive the war. Her daughter Irena remained in Warsaw and was saved due to her forged papers. Kazimierz Laski, was wounded in the battle of Warsaw when he fought in the Ludova Army, yet he survived the war. According to his testimony, Zofia also helped other Jews.
Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort
Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort lived in the city of Sassenheim in the center of Holland. Albertus, who was a member of the local underground movement in Holland helped Jews in many ways including finding hiding places for them, and also hid six Jews in his family’s house and looked after their needs. In June 1943 Albertus was arrested for his underground activities and taken to the Vught concentration camp where he was tortured and killed in August 1944. Of the six Jews whom he hid, only three have been identified: Jo Karp, who stayed there until Albertus’ arrest, and Ida and Abraham Faerber who hid there until the end of the war.
Recently, the Haverkorts’ son Henk found a Certificate of Appreciation from Keren Kayemet L’Israel in his parents’ house which was awarded for a tree that was planted in the Land of Israel immediately after the war in the name of Albertus Haverkort by Abraham Faerber - dedicated to “the help that the Haverkorts provided in those dark days of the Nazi occupation.” Henk decided to try to locate the Faerber family, and with the help of Mrs. Ruth de Jong, placed an ad in the newspaper of the Dutch community in Israel. Alice Lieberman-Faerber, the daughter of Abraham and Ida Faerber read the advertisement and contacted the Haverkort family.
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Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day
(Jerusalem) The central theme for this year’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day was The Anguish of Liberation and the Return to Life – Marking 60 Years Since the End of WWII.
The Official Opening Ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day took place on Wednesday, 4 May 2005, at 20:00, at Warsaw Ghetto Square, Yad Vashem, Har Hazikaron, Jerusalem.
President of the State of Israel Moshe Katsav, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon l addressed the participants. Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, kindled the Memorial Torch. Noach Flug, Chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, spoke on behalf of the survivors.
During the ceremony, six torches were lit by Holocaust survivors: First torch: Yerakhmiyel Felzenshteyn; second torch: Chaya Avraham; third torch: Dr. Robert M. Finaly; fourth torch: Malka Rosental; fifth torch: Mordechai (Motke) Zeidel; sixth torch Sofia Engelsman. During the ceremony, short videos of the torchlighters’ testimonies were shown (these were produced and directed by Shlomo Hazan).
The official memorial service took place during the ceremony. The Rishon Lezion Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar recited Psalms; the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yonah Metzger recited Kaddish. El Ma’aleh Rahamim was recited by Cantor Asher Hainowitz.
Participants in the ceremony included the conductor and violinist Shlomo Minz, the singer Sarit Hadad, the Ankor Choir, conducted by Dafna ben Yochanan, and the Ephroni Choir conducted by Maya Shavit. Narrative selections: Shmuel Vilozni. The evening’s MC was be Yigal Ravid.
The ceremony was broadcast live on television on Channels 1, 2, and 10 and by radio on Kol Israel and Galei Zahal.
At 22:00, there was a symposium in the auditorium at Yad Vashem entitled “Personal and Collective Memory”. Panel participants were Dr. Eli Ben Gal, Orna Ben David, Rabbi Dr. Binyamin Lau, the author Malka Adler, Prof. Maoz Azriyahu, and Avner Shalev. Immanuel Halperin chaired the panel.
Yad Vashem urges the public to submit names of Pages of Testimony for victims of the Shoah that have not yet been memorialized in Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. Names can be submitted online at www.yadvashem.org. Similarly, Yad Vashem urges people who have documents, testimonies, photographs, and artifacts from the Shoah to bring them to Yad Vashem where they will be kept for posterity.
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Urgent call to action from Yad Vashem: Register names of Holocaust victims (04-20-05)
Yad Vashem issues an urgent call to action to the Jewish world to join the International 11th hour campaign to gather names of Holocaust victims.
In advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) on May 5, 2005 and of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and VE day, Yad Vashem is issuing an urgent call to action to the Jewish world to join the International 11th hour campaign to gather names of Holocaust victims.
"The memory of millions of Holocaust victims will pass into oblivion as those that remember them leave us," warned Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate. "Now is the time for the Jewish people to work together to register the unrecorded names."
In fulfilling its mandate to memorialize and preserve the legacy of each individual Jew who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, Yad Vashem created The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. Now available at http://www.yadvashem.org/, the site is a revolutionary milestone in Holocaust remembrance that provides an opportunity to search for names, photographs and brief histories of over three million Holocaust victims, while also enabling the on-line submission of names, photographs and documents.
As many names are still missing, Yad Vashem is calling upon those who possess information on victims that are not recorded in the Database to urgently submit these missing names. Stressing the fact that testimonies and names given in the past to organizations other than Yad Vashem are probably NOT in the Central Database, Yad Vashem recommends conducting a search prior to the submission of names.
While making this appeal to individuals, Yad Vashem also urges Jewish organizations and survivor groups to initiate local name collections campaigns and to encourage their members to join such campaigns.
Victims’ names may be registered by submitting a form known as a Page of Testimony on-line. Paper forms are also available in several languages and may be downloaded from Yad Vashem’s website, or requested at: names.research@yadvashem.org.il; Tel: +972-2-6443582 or Fax: +972-2-6443579
Organizations wishing to mobilize a names’ collection drive should contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il
Since launching the Database in November 2004, the website has recorded over 4 million visitors from over 178 countries around the world. Of the millions who have visited the website, thousands of people have written to Yad Vashem to express their admiration and appreciation for this vital step in Holocaust remembrance. Some, with personal connections to the Shoah, have reconnected with the past; others have discovered a part of their history they did not know. Many have simply been overwhelmed the experience of “meeting the victims” and, in the words of one newspaper editorial, “seeing them look back at us.” Hundreds of families have discovered lost relatives with reunions taking place in Israel, the US, Germany and more.
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