Holocaust museums were established in Israel as early as 1949 following the founding of the state in 1948. The purpose of establishing Holocaust museums was twofold: to commemorate the victims and to display pre- and post-World War II artifacts, including cultural and artistic objects. Israel is currently home to a large number of Holocaust museums, usually categorized by the nationality of the founders, themes (e.g., the ghetto uprising), or affiliation (e.g. B’nei Akiva, Mizrahi, Shomer Hatzair, etc.). The Jewish Heritage Museum also contains specific segments on Holocaust, as part of its portrayal of Jewish history.
Researchers focused on relatives lost in the Holocaust are recommended to subscribe to the museums' newsletter whenever available, as they may be helpful in making new discoveries, as well as attending the yearly memorial services and interacting with other attendees, as the chances of someone knowing or remembering the family name being researched is high.
Yad VashemYad Vashem
The name Yad Vashem Museum was taken from a Biblical verse from Isaiah (56/5) “…I will give them in my house and walls a hand (yad) and a name (shem)…” Yad Vashem was established in 1953, with the encouragement and support of many survivors, in memory of the victims and symbolizing the rebirth of the Jewish People.[1] It is the official national Israeli memorial and the World Remembrance Center of the Holocaust, located on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, adjacent to Jerusalem Forest. As of today, the Yad Vashem complex is spread over close to 200 dunams (200,000 square meters). The Yad Vashem complex contains an extensive historical exhibition, a research facility (documenting the names of victims and oral testimonies), the children’s memorial, and the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations (which documents the names and countries of origins of more than 14,000 people who saved Jews during the Holocaust). Many sculptures and monuments have been installed in the open space, serving as memorials to the destroyed Jewish communities across Europe during the Holocaust. An educational center for both Israeli and international teachers offers seminars, workshops, and conferences. Entrance is free to all guests, and visitors number a few thousand per day. Yad Vashem has become an essential stop for every political leader or foreign dignitary coming to visit Israel. Among Israeli citizens, soldiers completing their training, high school students, and tourists come to visit Yad Vashem.
Since its inception, Yad Vashem has developed the “Pages of Testimonies” project. This is an extraordinary collection of names of victims presented by survivors. In 2013 this collection was registered in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. To date, Yad Vashem has approximately 2,700,000 Pages of Testimony. The Names Database currently commemorates over 4,800,000 Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered in the Holocaust. In January 2022, Yad Vashem partnered with the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and JewishGen, a leading website for Jewish genealogy whose records are available on MyHeritage.
ANU - Museum of the Jewish PeopleANU - Museum of the Jewish People
The establishment of the Museum of the Jewish People (formerly known as Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora-Beit Hatfutsot)[2] was conceived by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in 1959. The idea was to build a museum serving as an educational and cultural institution for Jews all around the world. It was named in honor of the WJC founder Dr. Nahum Goldman, located at the center of the Tel Aviv University campus, in Ramat Aviv. The Anu Museum opened on March 10, 2021. It was named ANU, meaning “Us” or “We” in Hebrew, representing inclusion, reflecting the diversity and collective spirit of world Jewry.
The former Polish Jewish partisan and renowned Israeli poet Abba Kovner suggested the format of the Museum, which includes the basic aspects of Jewish Life: family, community, religion, culture, history, and revival. The museum officially opened on May 15, 1978, and over the course of the following three decades, thousands of tourists from around the world and local schools and organizations benefited from visiting the museum. Despite this, there was always a shortage of funds. In 2005 the Israeli Knesset passed the “Beit Hatfutsot Law”, affirming Beit Hatfutsot as “The National Center for Jewish Communities in Israel and Around the World.” This new definition brought a plan of refurbishment, renovations, an additional wing, and technological upgrades. This improvement was made possible by a large grant from the Claims Conference, the Israeli government, and the Nadav Foundation.
Chamber of the HolocaustChamber of the Holocaust
The Chamber of the Holocaust Museum was the first Holocaust Museum in Israel, established in 1949 by Holocaust survivors in association with Rabbi Dr. Samuel Zangvil Kahane, Director General of the Israeli Minister of Religion. It is located on Mt. Zion under the management of the Diaspora Yeshiva, to serve as a designated memorial for the millions of Jews who were denied proper burial by the Nazis.[3] All prayers and Torah studies taking place at the Diaspora Yeshiva are dedicated to the souls of the Jewish victims of the Nazi Regime.
In the early 1950s, Rabbi Samuel Kahana, Director, brought ashes of Jewish victims from 22 German camps and desecrated Torah scrolls so they could be buried on Mt. Zion, Jerusalem. In Jewish tradition, cremation is considered disrespectful to the dead, and deceased people are usually buried in the ground as quickly as possible to preserve their honor. The museum hosts several exhibitions but almost all ten rooms and the courtyard are covered with plaques that represent tombstones commemorating more than 2,000 destroyed Jewish communities across Europe. Plaques were dedicated by survivors from the specific town, shtetls, and cities inscribed in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English in memory of loved ones. Special memorial services take place on the specific date that the Jews of the specific location were deported. Family descendants from all over the world gather on Holocaust Remembrance Day — this is an excellent opportunity to meet people with similar origins and ask if they recall the names of ancestors you are researching.
In contrast to the previously mentioned museums, this one displays personal religious ceremonial objects that were given by the survivors as soon as they arrived to settle in Israel. Among the many objects are a bloodstained Torah scroll from the city of Wegrow, Poland; a handwritten prayer book from Buchenwald camp; a coat sewn from Torah parchments; an Auschwitz concentration camp uniform; and other documents. The focus of this museum is to highlight Jewish life from before the Holocaust, including the religious, cultural, and professional lives of the victims.
Ganzach Kiddush HashemGanzach Kiddush Hashem
The Ganzach Kiddush Hashem Museum[4] was established in 1964 by Rabbi Moshe Prager, the sole survivor of his family in Poland. The Museum is in Bnei Brak, just outside of Tel Aviv. This museum is solely dedicated to the heroism and spiritual resistance of the religious Jews who went through the Holocaust. Right after he witnessed what the Nazis did to the many Jewish communities upon their invasion of Poland, Rabbi Prager began to smuggle documents, ceremonial objects, and materials related to pre-Holocaust Jewish life. Rabbi Moshe Prager considered himself “a man of three worlds”: pre-World War II, the Holocaust, and the post-Holocaust world. His life mission was to document everything he remembered about growing up among the numerous Jewish communities where he lived before the Holocaust, write many books about the Jewish cultural and religious life of the time, and document as many survivors' stories and testimonies as possible. In one of his famous poems, he writes: “Every evening I burn in the furnaces, and every morning I emerge from them alive and well." Over the course of more than 50 years, the museum management has collected a great number of materials suitable for research and education, including more than 300,000 photographs, 2,000,000 documents, 40,000 library volumes and 2,000 oral testimonies, which are being digitized.
Ghetto fighters' House MuseumGhetto fighters' House Museum
The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum (Lohamei HaGetaot) was established in 1949 by the members of Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot in the western Galil Region, representing many former fighters in the ghetto underground and partisans during the Holocaust.[5] The museum is also known as the Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum. Itzhak Katzenelson, after whom it was named, was born in Poland, taught Jewish studies, wrote poetry, and was a dramatist; murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
Most of the materials and documents kept by the museum were collected right after the survivors’ arrival in Israel. These materials cover different periods and topics, including youth movements, religious life, community life and culture, life in the camps and ghettos, Jewish resistance and the lives of the survivors in postwar Europe. The Museum has a special department for archival research, both in person and online, offering three levels of search: Quick, Basic, and advanced. Other resources for genealogists in the museum include:
- Letters, personal official documents (some from camps), diaries, testimonies, films, photographs, art collection and ceremonial art collection
- Archival information from the Jewish community of Mlawa, Poland
- Adolf-Avraham Berman’s collection on underground activity in Warsaw after the ghetto’s liquidation
- Turkow’s collection on theater and culture in the Warsaw ghetto
- A collection from the Zionist HeHalutz organization
- Yisrael Kaplan’s collection, Lithuanian testimonies of Holocaust survivors
- A unique collection of children survivors’ testimonies by Benjamin Tene, an emissary of HaShomer Hatzair in the DP camps
- A collection of documents concerning Dutch Jewry
- Photographs from British internment camps in Cyprus where Jewish immigrants were detained because they were not allowed to enter Israel
All of these materials have been digitized and cataloged and can be accessed directly from the museum.
Research your ancestors on MyHeritage
Explore more about Holocaust museums in IsraelExplore more about Holocaust museums in Israel
- MyHeritage Adds 28 Collections of Jewish Historical Records on the MyHeritage Blog
- Yad Vashem Testimonies
- JewishGen's Holocaust Database
- Guide to Genealogical Resources and Research at Yad Vashem from Israel Genealogy Research Association
- ANU - Museum of the Jewish People
- The Chamber of the Holocaust at Diaspora Yeshiva
- Ganzach Kiddush Hashem
- מוזיאון בית לוחמי הגטאו (in Hebrew)
References
- ↑ What Is Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem website
- ↑ Museums in Israel: ANU - The Museum of the Jewish People (Formerly Beit Hatefusot). Jewish Virtual Library
- ↑ Kenan, Orna (2003). Between Memory and History: The evolution of Israeli historiography of the Holocaust, 1945–1961. Peter Lang. pp. 47–48. ISBN 978-0820458052.
- ↑ Kiddush Hashem Archives/ גנזך קידוש השם
- ↑ Ghetto Fighters’ House. Jewish Virtual Library