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Soldiers at Yad Vashem
Photo by Isaac Harari |
Yad Vashem 2001
By Gail Lichtman
(May 1) -- With a growing interest in the Holocaust in Israel and abroad, Yad Vashem is investing heavily in a project to promote education and documentation --
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, is moving boldly into the 21st century in its quest to meaningfully commemorate the Holocaust for coming generations.
As the survivor generation dies out and the Holocaust takes on an increasingly Jewish and universal significance, Yad Vashem has drawn up a new master plan - Yad Vashem 2001, an ambitious $82 million development project designed to reshape the 47-year-old institution in order to meet the challenges of the new millennium.
Financed almost entirely by private donations, Yad Vashem 2001 will add new depth and direction to the Authority. Yad Vashem has already inaugurated its new International School for Holocaust Studies and its new Library and Archives Building. Computerization of the Authority's documentation system is being completed and beginning after Holocaust Remembrance Day, millions of names of Jewish victims, which are currently on display in the Hall of Names, will be made available to the public via the Internet.
Construction of a new entrance plaza and Visitor's Center, and expansion and refurbishment of the museum complex is slated for completion in 2001.
"Today, there is tremendous interest in the Holocaust, both on the part of Jews and non-Jews," states Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate. "I don't know if the population in Israel is aware of the extent of this change. More and more nations are teaching Holocaust studies in their high schools. More and more countries are setting up educational and research centers, and museums. In England, a Holocaust project will soon be inaugurated as part of the Imperial War Museum."
Time apparently has played a role in this phenomenon. According to Shalev, the growth of interest in the Holocaust around the world stems from people's need to a reexamine the past century:
"In summing up the 20th century, the Holocaust stuck out as the symbol of evil. It also acted as the symbol of the disappointment with which we closed this century, as opposed to optimism with which it began. The 20th century was greeted with a belief that modern technology would bring about a better life. But the Holocaust and the atomic bomb stand out as symbols of this lost optimism."
Yad Vashem was established in 1953 by an act of the Knesset. It is entrusted with the task of commemorating, documenting, and researching the Holocaust of the six million Jews, the destroyed Jewish communities, the heroic ghetto and resistance fighters, as well as the Righteous Among the Nations.
The Yad Vashem Authority is a corporate institution, administered by a council and a directorate.
Under law, the Government of Israel undertook to participate in the costs of its construction and maintenance, but Yad Vashem is permitted to accept allocations, income, and contributions from other sources.
Yad Vashem sits on 45 acres of woodland on the Mount of Remembrance, next to Mount Herzl. Among the tasks the law assigns to Yad Vashem are: to establish memorial projects; to gather, research, and publish testimony of the Holocaust and its heroes; to impart its lessons; to grant commemorative citizenship to the victims; and to represent Israel on international projects aimed at perpetuating the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and of World War II.
The original Archives, Library, and Administration Building was completed in 1957. The Hall of Remembrance, dedicated to the six million victims, was inaugurated in 1961. Its two gates were sculpted by artists David Palombo and Bezalel Schatz. In 1962, the first trees were planted honoring the Righteous Among the Nations.
The Hall of Names was dedicated in 1968. The Historical Museum opened in 1973 and the Soldiers,' Partisans,' and Ghetto Fighters' monument was erected in 1985. The Children's Memorial, commemorating the one and a half million children who perished in the Holocaust, was dedicated in 1987, and the Valley of the Communities was built in the early 1990s. Recently, Yad Vashem has placed a greater emphasis on its educational and documentation facilities, which it is in the midst of significantly expanding, while placing less importance on memorial structures.
The renewed world interest in the Holocaust has resulted in a recent wealth of books and movies. Paradoxically, now, more than half a century after the Holocaust, there is more interest in the subject than there was immediately after the war. Following WWII, there was a conspiracy of silence.
According to Shalev, on the one hand, society didn't pressure the survivors to recount their experiences because people generally didn't want to know about the atrocities. There were many reasons to account for this - including feelings of guilt on the part of both Jews and non-Jews. In Israel, the newly arrived immigrants were immersed in the struggle to create the State, and then to gather in the exiles.
"On the other hand," notes Shalev, "the survivors themselves did not want to speak out because most of their energy went into rebuilding their lives. There is just so much energy that a person has. They built new families. They built themselves up both financially and within the community."
In Israel, the survivors devoted their energies into integrating into society and building the State, with many fighting in the War of Independence.
Only after they had established themselves did they begin to open up by talking to their grandchildren, but not to their children.
"Today, they are willing to write about and relate their stories," Shalev says. "In the 1950s and 60s, only one or two memoirs a year were published. Today, we have a flood of 240 a year, or about five a week."
For the Jewish people, the Holocaust has become the cement that binds them together as they struggle to preserve their Jewish identity amid rampant assimilation and the loss of religious values. It helps Jews remain connected to Judaism, and encourages them to learn about Judaism.
"People learn about the Holocaust because it is dramatic, it is a turning point. From there, they learn about the Jewish world and Jewish traditions, which creates a connection to the Jewish people and a feeling of continuity," Shalev says. "The Holocaust has become a preventative force against assimilation."
In Israel in the early years of the State there was a sense of purpose that united the population. But in recent decades that consensus has been broken.
"Today, we have lost our anchor," says Shalev. "Israelis are looking for a secular way to give meaning to Jewish identity. The Holocaust has become the common thread connecting Israelis with their Jewish past. This has both positive and negative elements. I don't believe that the Holocaust should be the only component. I believe it should be one among many components of our collective identity. But I see the energy arising from interest in the Holocaust as, on the whole, positive. Interest in the Holocaust pushes people to have a stronger commitment to Jewish identity."
This has greatly influenced Yad Vashem's approach. The 2001 plan gives renewed priority to education. Shalev admits that in the past, Yad Vashem invested very heavily in research, and while the Authority opened its education department in the 1960s, it didn't invest very many of its resources into it.
To change this, the Authority, as part of Yad Vashem 2001, inaugurated its new International School for Holocaust Studies in December 1999.
"The school is more than a building, it is a concept, a statement. We have to develop an educational system to teach the Holocaust to the fourth generation, to a different world, with different technologies and experiences," explains Shalev.
The only facility of its kind in the world, the school has a staff of some 80 educators and was established with the support of the Ministry of Education. It has 17 classrooms, a modern multimedia center, a resource and pedagogical center, workshop rooms, and an auditorium.
It will be used by approximately 100,000 students and youth annually, as well as 50,000 soldiers, and thousands of teachers and educators from Israel and from around the world. The Ministry of Education has approved a program whereby every student in Israel will spend at least one study day at Yad Vashem.
"The main aim of this school is to educate teachers, from Israel and abroad, who are involved in Holocaust education in formal and informal educational institutions," Shalev explains.
The school will offer courses for educators in seven languages and will also send its professional staff around the world for the purpose of Holocaust commemoration.
Shalev admits that one of the sad ironies is that the upsurge in Holocaust interest comes at a time when the survivors are dying off.
"We are taking the opportunity to grasp the last historical moments - to do what we can to get the names, testimonies, the Spielberg videos," he notes.
The new Archives and Library Building, which officially opened in March 2000, houses the largest collection of Holocaust material in the world - over 55 million pages of documentation and 80,000 book titles. "The archives and the library are the information repositories on which the structure of remembrance rests," Shalev says.
The archives collection includes personal testimonies, Nazi documentation, records of Nazi war criminal trials, and diaries and memoirs, all housed in a fully climate-controlled building. The film and photo archives store 130,000 photographs, as well as thousands of video cassettes and films on reels. The book collection is the largest collection in the world of published material on the Holocaust, its background, and repercussions.
Among the millions of documents are two postcards, with New Year's greetings, sent by a Dutch teenager in hiding to her friends. On one of them, the jolly winter scenery on one side contrasts with the nearly blank flip side, where all that appears is a one line greeting and the stark signature - Anne Frank.
The growth in Holocaust interest has stretched Yad Vashem's facilities almost to the breaking point. In 1999, the Authority recorded a record number of visitors - 2,075,793, a 32% increase since 1998. Since 1995, the amount of visitors has almost doubled.
"We need new museum facilities because we have more and more visitors," Shalev insists. "We cannot accommodate 2 million people a year in the current museum. We are at the very limits of our capacity. We have lengthened visiting hours, and we still will not be able to accommodate all [of our visitors] in the very near future if we do not build a larger museum."
The expansion and refurbishment of the museum complex goes hand in hand with the construction of a new entrance plaza and Visitor's Center, and the improvement of infrastructure and parking at Yad Vashem. Both the new museum and the center are designed by internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie.
The new Visitor's Center is intended to serve as a bridge between the everyday world and the sanctity of the memorial site by preparing visitors for the Yad Vashem experience. It will also provide services and amenities such as a cafeteria and gift shop.
The expanded museum complex will include a modernized historical museum, rich in authentic artifacts and documents, an art museum displaying the world's most extensive collection of Holocaust art, and a new area for temporary exhibits.
"The overall concept here is to make Yad Vashem a dynamic experience and not just a memorial. The new museum complex will assist the visitors in moving from Jerusalem's urban environment, through the woods, to the green hill of Yad Vashem. We will be adding a shuttle to the Valley of the Communities and also foot paths for those wanting to walk. What we will not be adding are any more memorials or monuments," Shalev concludes.
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