Shalom,

This year as we enter into the season of the Jewish High Holidays, we urge you to reach out to others and stress the importance of commemorating the names of Shoah victims, now, while those who remember are still among us.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, drawing on biblical sources, delivers an inspirational drasha (homily) on the importance of commemorating the Jews who perished during the Shoah. Rabbi Lau, himself a child survivor of Buchenwald, powerfully calls upon Jews across the world, to join Yad Vashem's efforts to recover the names of each individual Shoah victim by filling out Pages of Testimony in their memory and submitting them to Yad Vashem. Share his message with friends and family by forwarding this video link.
To order a Free DVD of Rabbi Lau's message email us at names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il

This summer, the discovery of a Page of Testimony in memory of Zisha Katz, a well-known actor in the The Yiddishe Bande of Warsaw, by his great-granddaughter Penny Glaser (USA) enabled her to locate her cousin, Gerald Schor in Israel. As a child living in New York in 1939, Schor got to know his cousin Zisha well when he stayed with his family for the summer while he performed there in the Jewish Theatre. For Glaser's mother, Naomi Shlomovitz, a child Holocaust survivor and grand-daughter of Zisha Katz, this discovery led to her union with dozens of relatives around the world that she never knew existed.

Myra Giberovitch, MSW from Montreal, Canada shares insights into her clinical experience of using Pages of Testimony as a therapeutic tool since the mid-1990s. She asserts that helping
Survivors complete memorialize their relatives and friends that perished enables them to externalize their pain and helps provide them with peace of mind, as each Page of Testimony documents the name of a formerly anonymous victim and fulfills survivors’ responsibility to bear witness.
Visit our new "Feedback" link highlighting reactions from people implementing the project.

Read the story of a prayer book and the souls it touched as it journeyed across the borders of war-ravaged Europe to new beginnings in Brazil, and then, decades later, finally brought comfort and closure to the bereaved brother of Shoah victim Heinz Eschwege, in the United States.

View a sample of testimonies, artifacts, photos, greeting cards and prayer books from Yad Vashem’s archival collections, to learn about how Jews marked the high holidays before, during and immediately after the Holocaust.

With best wishes for a happy and peaceful new year.

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

Visit our Community Outreach Guide