Yad Vashem Publications

Editors: Bella Gutterman and Nina Springer-Aharoni

Head Curator: Vivian Uria

Curator: Haviva Peled-Carmeli, Deputy Curators: Michael Tal, Sara Shor

The Yad Vashem Synagogue catalogue - The artifacts displayed in the Yad Vashem Synagogue are a few of the thousands of items preserved in Yad Vashem's collections that tell the story of the Jewish people – a panoramic mosaic of memories depicting the fate of individuals, families and communities during the Holocaust.  The artifacts in our collections tell stories interwoven with flashes of fear, despair and loss, but also moments of determination, pity, hope, courage and love.  These stories evoke empathy with the fate of the victims, and place the Jewish individual at the heart of the narrative that unfolds in the Holocaust History Museum.  The significance of these artifacts is hoin ned by their integration the vast, complex fabric that shapes collective memory from countless fragments of personal recollection.  The display area and the space currently used as the Synagogue combine to depict the lost Jewish life in the face of its continuity today.  These artifacts bear mute testimony to the history and legacy of individuals and communities during the Holocaust that we seek to commemorate and to impart to future generations.

Edited by Christoph Dieckmann and Arkadi Zeltser

Rika Benveniste

Edited by Dan Michman and Robert Rozett

The Holocaust unquestionably shattered most normative frameworks and cast the struggle for survival in its starkest form. Yet despite this, the Holocaust did not necessarily lead Jews to act as lone wolves, caring only about their own survival. This volume demonstrates that Jewish solidarity during the Holocaust is a multifaceted, multilayered issue, replete with complexities and shadings that reflect the diversity of Jewishness and Jewish existence, as well as the unprecedented dire situations that challenged it, and while solidarity was not a given and may not have predominated, it did not cease to exist.