JERUSALEM — With survivors dying in growing numbers and their live testimonies soon to be a thing of the past, Holocaust commemoration efforts are increasingly focused around preserving the belongings that contain their stories.
It’s the central challenge for Yad Vashem and other Holocaust museums around the world — keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive after its last survivors pass away.
The German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, wiping out a third of world Jewry. In addition to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis also confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little behind. Those who survived often had just a small item or two they managed to keep. Many have clung to the sentimental objects ever since.
In recent years, Yad Vashem has embarked on a last-ditch effort to collect as many items as possible from Israel’s aging population of less than 200,000 survivors and their relatives. The goal of the “Gathering the Fragments” project is to collect as many artifacts as possible before the survivors — and their stories — are gone forever.
