The Book of Names is a large-scale commemoration book, whose pages detail the names and short biographical information about approximately 4,800,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust known to and documented by Yad Vashem, out of a total of 5.8 million victims. The book was printed in two editions, in 2013, and a decade later. [1]
The idea to establish the Book of Names stemmed from people coming to the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem and wanting to physically touch the Pages of Testimony, to embody the commemoration - which was not possible since the pages are archival sources under preservation. The source and inspiration for the mode of commemoration in the Book of Names are European synagogues like the Pinkas Synagogue in the Jewish Museum in Prague, where tens of thousands of names of Holocaust victims are inscribed on the walls. The accessibility of the names, in an unmediated way, inspired the Book of Names, in which one can touch each and every name of the Holocaust victims. [2]
As part of the "Every Person Has a Name" commemoration project, the names of the many Holocaust victims about whom information reached Yad Vashem were collected, usually following testimony gathered from survivors via Pages of Testimony. The names database is available on site and online, but unlike the digital database, the Book of Names is a monumental physical monument commemorating the victims in a tangible way. It emphasizes their quantity alongside their individuality by dispelling the anonymity of each name and briefly focusing on the life journey of the person who bore it, separately from the whole for a fleeting moment. [3]
In 2013, the book was printed in a single copy containing around 4,300,000 names. It is displayed in a permanent exhibition in Block 27 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, at the final station. [4]
In 2023, the book was re-issued in an updated version containing approximately 4,800,000 names. On January 26, on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it was exhibited at the United Nations headquarters, attended by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Danny Dayan. The exhibition was displayed for several weeks until February 17. In March, it was transferred to Israel, and on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day 5783, it was placed on permanent display at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, in the presence of President Isaac Herzog. [5]
The names appear in English alphabetical order. Next to them are details of date and place of birth, and place of murder, as known. The book's pages are tall and rigid, 30 cm wide and 1 meter high. The 20,000 pages are bound into 70 volumes of about 80,000 names each. The volumes are arranged along 8 meters on both sides of a black stand, illuminated from below. On the front of the stand is the name of the book and its purpose. At Yad Vashem, it is accessible for reading in a permanent hall with wooden benches placed along its walls, away from the book's two ends. [6] [7]
Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; echoing the stories of the survivors; honoring Jews who fought against their Nazi oppressors and gentiles who selflessly aided Jews in need; and researching the phenomenon of the Holocaust in particular and genocide in general, with the aim of avoiding such events in the future. Yad Vashem's vision, as stated on its website, is: "To lead the documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, and to convey the chronicles of this singular Jewish and human event to every person in Israel, to the Jewish people, and to every significant and relevant audience worldwide."
Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah, known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. It is held on the 27th of Nisan, unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Jewish Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.
This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.
Roza Robota or Róża Robota in Polish, referred to in other sources as Rojza, Rózia or Rosa, was the leader of a group of four women Holocaust resistors hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for their role in the Sonderkommando prisoner revolt of 7 October 1944.
The March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar, thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
Franciszek Piper is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a more accurate number of victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. According to his research, at least 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom about 960,000 were Jewish. He is the author of several books and chair of the Historical Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Czesława Kwoka was a Polish Catholic girl who was murdered at the age of 14 in Auschwitz. One of the thousands of minor child and teen victims of German World War II war crimes against ethnic Poles in German-occupied Poland, she is among those memorialized in an Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum exhibit, "Block no. 6: Exhibition: The Life of the Prisoners".
The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the genocide of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, an attempt to implement its "final solution" to the Jewish question. 27 January was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.
We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, is a book by Gideon Greif. First published in Hebrew in 1999, the work was translated into English in 2005. Greif's book based on a series of interviews with surviving Sonderkommandos - Jewish prisoners who survived by working in the German death camps. The writer, Gideon Greif, is a researcher at Yad Vashem, Israel, the principal institution in the world studying the history of the Holocaust. He had also served as a visiting professor at The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies, the University of Miami.
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and other European railways under the control of Nazi Germany and its allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
A Page of Testimony is a form issued by Yad Vashem that asks for information about a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Over 4.3 million Pages of Testimony have been submitted to Yad Vashem, beginning in the 1950s. Most of these, as well as other forms of documentation of Holocaust victims, are searchable and viewable online through Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names.
Maria Kotarba was a courier in the Polish resistance movement, smuggling clandestine messages and supplies among the local partisan groups. She was arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo as a political prisoner before being imprisoned in Tarnów and then deported to Auschwitz on 6 January 1943. Maria Kotarba was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem on 18 September 2005 for risking her life to save the lives of Jewish prisoners in two Nazi concentration camps.
Wilhelm Brasse was a Polish professional photographer and a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. He became known as the "famous photographer of Auschwitz concentration camp." His life and work were the subject of the 2005 Polish television documentary film The Portraitist (Portrecista), which first aired in the Proud to Present series on the Polish TVP1 on 1 January 2006.
The Portraitist is a 2005 Polish television documentary film about the life and work of Wilhelm Brasse, the famous "photographer of Auschwitz", made for TVP1, Poland, which first aired in its "Proud to Present" series on January 1, 2006. It also premiered at the Polish Film Festival, at the West London Synagogue, in London, on March 19, 2007.
The World Holocaust Forum is a series of events aimed at preserving the memory of the Holocaust. It is also known as the "Let My People Live!" Forum.
Erich Kulka was a Czech-Israeli writer, historian and journalist who survived the Holocaust. After World War II, he made it his life's mission to research the Holocaust and publicize facts about it.
Bat-Sheva Dagan was a Polish-Israeli orator, psychologist, and writer. A Holocaust survivor born in Łódź, Poland, she was incarcerated in a ghetto in Radom with her parents and two sisters in 1940. After her parents and a sister were deported and murdered in Treblinka in August 1942, she escaped to Germany, but was discovered, imprisoned, and deported to Auschwitz in May 1943.
Every Person Has a Name or Everyone Has a Name is Yad Vashem's commemoration project to document the names of those killed in the Holocaust. The project's goal is to commemorate the victims individually, ensuring that at the very least the names of the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust are recorded. The project's name is taken from the poem by Zelda, "Every Person Has a Name".
TheHolocaust Remembrance in Israel refers to how the Holocaust is expressed in the country's social and cultural discourse. This encompasses commemoration as well as the various ways the Holocaust is situated within the Israeli ethos. Examining the place of the Holocaust in Israeli public memory involves historical, sociological, anthropological, and cultural discussions. Holocaust remembrance also significantly impacts theological issues, such as religious faith during and after the Holocaust.