Shalom,
Ahead of the UN commissioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan 27th 2010, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight some of Yad Vashem's activities and invite you take an active role in our worldwide outreach efforts for the Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project. 

Marking 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, a new exhibition, entitled Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints will display original architectural blueprints of Auschwitz-Birkenau, given to Yad Vashem for safekeeping last summer by the German newspaper Bild. A traveling version of the exhibition will open at the United Nations in New York in advance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Now is the time to incorporate Names Recovery efforts into your local Yom Hashoah commemoration events. We invite you to visit our community outreach guide for ideas and resources on how to launch a Names Recovery Campaign in your community. To order posters and additional promotional materials please contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il To schedule a phone call with me to discuss your ideas for implementation, send me an email with several alternate dates and times that are convenient for you.

Veronica Zer (nee Rudas) last saw her second cousin Lili Reiter in 1945 when she returned to Hungary after surviving Auschwitz, where her mother and younger sister perished. The two cousins, who had lost touch with one another soon after, when they went their separate ways to rebuild their lives, were recently reunited thanks to a Page of Testimony. The two cousins had an emotional reunion in Israel where they visited Yad Vashem's Hall of Remembrance and Valley of the Communities. Click here to read the article.

In creating the permanent exhibition for the new Holocaust History Museum, one of the many elements Yad Vashem sought to introduce was the emphasis on the fate of the individual during the Holocaust.  Identifying the men, women and children who appear in the photographic display restores names and identities to unknown faces, thereby rescuing them from anonymity. Visit a new online exhibit about survivors and individuals who have come forward and identified themselves, their relatives and acquaintances in the photographs on display.

With warmest regards from Jerusalem,

Cynthia Wroclawski, Manager
The Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project
Yad Vashem, POB 3477
Jerusalem, 91034 ISRAEL

Visit our Community Outreach Guide