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Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 “My Lost Childhood”

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Edited by: TJVNews.com

 

This heartwrenching testimony of Renee Kochman (Renia Baaf) expresses the sense of the utter despair she and many thousands of survivors felt after liberation. During the war, all of their energies were focused on the daily struggle to survive. Now that they had finally been liberated by the Allied Forces and their enemies destroyed, those who had lived through the Holocaust were faced with having to piece together their lives.

 

Child survivors were especially affected by this newfound reality. Many of them, entrusted during the Shoah to non-Jews for safekeeping from the Nazi onslaught, were left with no one to redeem them. While DP camps helped restore a sense of community and a feeling of agency for many adult survivors, children required a special set of needs and care – in the medical, psychological and educational spheres. In the months following liberation, social welfare organizations began establishing special children’s homes throughout much of Europe to meet these demands.

 

In advance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, has uploaded a new online exhibition, entitled “My Lost Childhood,” telling the stories of seven of these homes established across Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. Through the voices of survivor testimony as well as artifacts, photographs and documents from Yad Vashem’s unrivalled collections, this moving exhibition brings to life the terrifying ordeals of the children brought to the homes, and how they were gently assisted – often by survivors themselves – to re-enter normative society.

 

“This exhibition sheds light on what Jewish children had to endure in order to survive and then rebuild their lives,” states Dana Porath, Director of the Digital Department in Yad Vashem’s Communications Division. “But above all, it tells the story of the resilience of these children and how, despite their unspeakable traumas, the vast majority became fully contributing members to the countries in which they later settled.”

 

“Today, as the world continues to battle expressions of hatred, antisemitism and xenophobia, the significance and meaning of the Holocaust is particularly relevant,” remarks Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. “It is Yad Vashem’s ongoing mission to make sure that the stories and voices of the Holocaust victims and survivors are maintained and preserved for generations to come.”

 

In addition to the online exhibition Yad Vashem will once again launch the Wall, which is now available in six languages. Each participant who joins the event will be randomly linked to one of the individuals recorded in Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, which today includes more than 4,800,000 names. Their names will then appear together on the IRemember Wall. Participants can also choose additional Holocaust victims from the Names Database to commemorate on the Wall. Those who join are encouraged to share the stories on their social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

“I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger,”

David wrote in his last letter, which he sent from Vilna in 1941. Today, 80 years after the 19-year-old was murdered during the Holocaust, Yad Vashem is fulfilling the last wishes of David and many other Holocaust victims through its IRemember Wall project. This unique online commemorative initiative allows the public to identify with the names and stories of some of the six million Jewish men, women and children whose lives were brutally cut short by the Nazi Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem will be partnering again this year with Facebook International to promote the project on social media. As last year, Facebook will use its platform and resources in order to encourage global awareness and outreach of this meaningful initiative.

“By partnering together with Facebook, we are able to reach a wider international audience, which is crucial to keeping the memory of the Jewish victims alive and the meanings of the Holocaust relevant in today’s complex reality. Last year, over 85,000 victims were commemorated by people from some 175 countries around the world in their own languages – making each participant an ‘ambassador of memory,’ responsible for promulgating the voices of those who were murdered.”.Iris Rosenberg, Director of Yad Vashem’s Communications Division

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stated: “I am so grateful for all that Yad Vashem does to honor the victims of the Holocaust – including this incredible IRemember Wall project. Facebook is honored to be a part of this project, helping to tell the story of the millions of women, men, and children murdered by the Nazis. They deserve to be remembered so this never happens again.”

Many members of the public who participated in last year’s IRemember Wall were grateful for the opportunity to bring personal meaning to International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Thank you for giving me a place to acknowledge the individual and not the just statistics,” commented Catherine F.  Liana L. wrote, “This is a great initiative and I am grateful for being able to learn about three victims and reflect about their lives… they will never be forgotten.”

 

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