Israeli President Herzog unveils monument for Holocaust victims at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem
Israeli President Isaac Herzog unveiled a new monument – The Book of Names of Holocaust Victims – at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem on Sunday.
The monument memorializes some 4.8 million names of Jewish individuals murdered during the Nazi Holocaust in 1933-1945.
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, or Yad Vashem, is the world’s leading Holocaust-memorial site and has focused for years on preserving the names and memory of the Holocaust’s 6 million Jewish victims.
Yad Vashem President Dani Dayan emphasized the importance of the Book of Names monument.
“Each of these Jews had a name, a face and a unique story,” he said. “They were not anonymous victims as the Nazis wanted us to see them. Seventy years later, our duty is to continue to search all the archives, to explore all the sources of documentation and to turn over every stone in order to find all the names that can be saved from oblivion.”
The Holocaust is universally recognized as the greatest crime in modern human history.
While students across the world learn about the Holocaust, many find it difficult to comprehend the 6 million victims as 6 million individuals. Naming the victims is a way to humanize the enormous tragedy that wiped out one-third of the Jewish people in the heart of supposedly civilized Europe.
Alexander Avram, the director of Yad Vashem’s name restoration project, stressed the importance of naming each of the victims.
“As we move away from the events of the Holocaust, our duty of memory and commemoration becomes much more difficult,” Avram said.
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
