Yad VaJerusalemhem Volume 89, June 2019 "Tell Your Children" Wartime Diary Charts Development of Hidden Baby (pp. 16-17) Yad VaJerusalemhem Contents Volume 89, Sivan 5779, June 2019 Breaking Ground for the New Shoah Heritage Campus ■ 2-3 Published by: New Online Exhibition ■ 4-5 “Love Her Like a Mother” Last Letters from the Holocaust: 1944 Highlights of Holocaust Remembrance Day Leah Goldstein 2019 ■ 6-7 ■ Educational Activities Boost Chairman of the Council: Rabbi Israel Meir Lau Intergenerational Remembrance ■ 8 Chancellor of the Council: Dr. Moshe Kantor ■ During this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Vice Chairman of the Council: Dr. Yitzhak Arad Education ■ 9-11 Day in Israel, Yad Vashem held a Chairman of the Directorate: Avner Shalev Graduate Spotlight ■ 9 groundbreaking ceremony for its new Shoah Director General: Dorit Novak Gloria Urizar de Martinez, Paraguay Heritage Campus. The moving event was Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Seminar for German-Speaking attended by former head of the Jewish Agency Research and Incumbent, John Najmann Chair Journalists ■ 9 Natan Sharansky, Ambassadors of Germany for Holocaust Studies: Prof. Dan Michman and Austria to Israel, Shoah Heritage Campus Chief Historian: Prof. Dina Porat Tackling Holocaust Education in the 21st Century ■ 10-11 supporters, representatives of Friends of Yad Academic Advisor: Vashem worldwide and Holocaust survivors. Prof. Yehuda Bauer Gandel Graduate Conference Marks The new Campus, to be built at Yad Vashem Members of the Yad Vashem Directorate: Ten Years of Activity Shmuel Aboav, Yossi Ahimeir, Daniel Atar, on Jerusalem's Mount of Remembrance, Collections ■ 12-19 Dr. David Breakstone, Abraham Duvdevani, will include the Shoah Heritage Collections Erez Eshel, Prof. Boleslaw (Bolek) Goldman, New in the Library ■ 12 Center; the Joseph Wilf Curatorial Center; the Moshe Ha-Elion, Adv. Shlomit Kasirer, Calendar from a Destroyed Community Yehiel Leket, Adv. Tamar Peled Amir, Heritage Gallery for display of treasures from Avner Shalev, Baruch Shub, Dalit Stauber, 80 Years On ■ 13 its collections; and the renovated Auditorium, Dr. Zehava Tanne, Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, Personal Artifacts from the Kindertransport including a main hall and the Family and Adv. Shoshana Weinshall, Dudi Zilbershlag “New on Display” ■ 14-15 Children’s Exhibition Gallery. The central component of the new Campus THE MAGAZINE Museum Presents Lives and Creations of Artists during the Shoah is the Shoah Heritage Collections Center, with Editor-in-Chief: Iris Rosenberg state-of-the-art intake, conservation and “Tell Your Children" ■ 16-17 Managing Editor: Leah Goldstein Wartime Diary Charts Development storage facilities for Yad Vashem's unrivaled Editorial Board: of Hidden Baby collections of Holocaust-era artworks, artifacts Simmy Allen and archival materials. Situated in a strategically Deborah Berman Extraordinary Requests prominent, highly visible location – opposite Adam Henderson for Remembrance ■ 18-19 Dana Porath the Hall of Remembrance, one of the most Lilach Tamir-Itach Research ■ 20-21 frequently visited sites of Yad Vashem – the Dana Weiler-Polak ■ 20 Susan Weisberg Research Fellow: Winson Chu Shoah Heritage Collections Center will comprise Editorial Coordinator: Miri Rabinovich Nissim Annual Lecture in Memory of four subterranean levels covering a total area Language Editor: Leah Goldstein Prof. David Bankier ■ 20 of 5,880 square meters (63,300 square feet). During the ceremony, Yad Vashem Chairman Proofreader: Ezra Olman Beni Vitzberg: From Death to Battle ■ 21 Avner Shalev called the items in Yad Vashem's Translated by: James Joseph Mclntosh Auschwitz Survivor and Palmach Fighter collections – including 210 million pages of Assisted by: Alexander Avram, Yad Vashem Studies ■ 21 documentation, 34,000 personal artifacts and Shaya Ben Yehuda, Layla Blenden, Halakha and the Holocaust Ayala Peretz, Amanda Smulowitz, close to 12,000 original artworks – “the building Martin Sykes-Haas News ■ 22-24 blocks of truthful Shoah remembrance… the Photography: Yossi Ben-David, Isaac Harari, human memories that allow us to pass on the Friends Worldwide ■ 25-31 Noam Revkin Fenton, Martin Sykes-Haas stories of their creators and owners for future Production: Ahva Printing Press Company Ltd. generations." Design: Stephanie & Ruti Design Natan Sharansky cited Viktor Frankl's This magazine was published with the seminal work Man's Search for Meaning, assistance of The Azrieli Group. and the importance of giving significance to ISSN 0793-7199 one's life even as one faces certain death. The ©Articles appearing in this issue may be reprinted experiences of people under such regimes as with proper acknowledgement. Nazi Europe and the communist Soviet Union, Yad Vashem’s activities are supported by as he himself recalled, are vital not only for those living their lives at the time, but also Israel's Ministry of Education for those living in the future, in order to learn how best to advance humanity. “The State of and The Conference on Jewish Material ■ On the cover: The inner binding of the diary Claims Against Germany. marking the development of the infant Abraham Israel, Yad Vashem and Yad Vashem's Friends Packter, with the caption, “Wim [Abraham’s false guarantee that the memory of the Shoah will identity], February 20, 1943” (see pp. 16-17) live on for generations to come." 2 Breaking Ground for the New Shoah Heritage Campus of the Society of Friends of Yad Vashem in Germany, called the occasion a “humble moment, full of responsibility." Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, he stated, “is a place that not only collects all the memories, it also treasures and disseminates them for all of humanity to see and learn. Here, on the Mount of Remembrance, we have partnered with Yad Vashem to build a new home for all of the pieces of the history of ■ Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev displaying the Scroll of Dedication with Jane Wilf, Kai Diekmann and other Shoah Heritage Campus supporters "The State of Israel, Yad Vashem and Yad Vashem's friends guarantee that the memory of the Shoah will live on for generations to come." Natan Sharansky the Holocaust, bringing them together under one roof to serve as everlasting proof to the atrocities of the Shoah. This is the place that not only holds them together, but also restores the voices of the victims. This campus will serve as home to the dreams that were never ■ The Scroll of Dedication being buried in the ground at the site of the new Shoah Heritage Campus by Third Generation representatives Jonah Burian, Zachary Habif and Andy Shapell dreamt; the hopes that never came true; the wishes that will never be fulfilled." Speaking on behalf of the American we are faced with the profound challenge of Following the moving ceremony – which Society for Yad Vashem, Jane Wilf described ensuring the preservation of Yad Vashem’s included a performance by the Sheba children's Yad Vashem as “the epicenter for Holocaust collections for posterity, their accessibility to choir – stakeholders signed two copies of a Scroll remembrance, for the Jewish People, Israel the public, and the transmission of the memory of Dedication. One was kept in Yad Vashem and and all of humanity… The Shoah Heritage of the victims and survivors of the Shoah to the other was buried under the spot where the Campus and all of its components constitute future generations." Shoah Heritage Campus will be built. an integral thread in the fabric of Yad Vashem’s Speaking on behalf of Yad Vashem Friends vital work. Through these very components, Societies in Europe, Kai Diekmann, Chairman 3 New Online Exhibition “Love Her Like a Mother” Last Letters from the Holocaust: 1944 ■ Carmen Sorias as a toddler, with her parents, Claire-Clara and Moïse-Moshe, Milan, Italy, 1940 Yad Vashem Archives ■ Giuseppe-Yosef Sorias Yad Vashem, Hall of Names ■ “The writer of this letter is a distraught the Holocaust. Most of the letters were donated mother who is being taken away with her to Yad Vashem as part of the national “Gathering family to an unknown destination... I am the Fragments” campaign. They were sent sending you an adoption document for my from Ukraine, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, little daughter, in which I give her up for her Hungary, the Czech Republic, France and Russia own good. In this way, perhaps she will be to relatives and friends from homes, hiding saved and they won't take her. I have no other choice... I beg of you, love her like a mother, Written in a variety of so that she feels my absence less keenly. Don't tell her where I am.” languages – Italian, Isabella-Bella Fodor from Cluj (Kolozsvár) German, Dutch, wrote these heartrending words to the Szomors, a Christian family looking after her eight-year- Hungarian, French and old daughter Gita in Nagyvárad. Isabella also Russian – these missives signed a declaration waiving her parental rights to Gita, and agreeing to her adoption by the are sometimes the sole Szomors. In the declaration, Isabella requested evidence that the person that Gita convert to Christianity and receive a Catholic education. At the end of May 1944, existed the Jews of the Cluj ghetto, including Isabella and her mother Emilia, began to be deported to places, ghettos, jails and camps. Written in a Auschwitz. Isabella and Emilia were murdered in variety of languages – Italian, German, Dutch, the death camp. Gita's father, Chaim Fodor, was Hungarian, French and Russian – these missives drafted to the Hungarian Army labor battalions are sometimes the sole evidence that the person and did not return. Gita survived. existed, and they make it possible to tell the Isabella's letter is one of 13 last letters stories of individuals in the Holocaust and from the Holocaust, housed in the Yad Vashem give its victims a name, a face and a memory. Archives, that have gone on display in the After Italy surrendered to the Allies in fourth and final installment in the series of September 1943, the Germans occupied most online exhibitions showcasing last letters from of Italian territory, including Milan, and began Jewish men, women and children murdered in nonstop hunts for Jews.