9 January Evening marking 10 Tevet—the General Day of Mourning in cooperation with the Israel Council of Young Israel. The evening opened with a guided tour of the new Museum for members of the movement, and continued in the auditorium, with the participation of Yad Vashem Council member Prof. Meir Schwartz and a lecture by Rabbi Yuval Sherlo on “Kaddish and Kedusha.” Some 300 people attended.

10 January Event marking 10 Tevet—the General Day of Mourning at the International School of Holocaust Studies’ branch in Beit Wolyn, Givatayim – Yad Vashem Holocaust Education Center in Givatayim, in cooperation with the Givatayim Municipality and the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute. Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau participated in the event, during which cantorial pieces were sung with musical accompaniment by Raymond Goldstein. Some 250 people attended.

22 January Assembly of the Memorial Foundation for Romanian Jewry, marking 65 years since the Bucharest pogrom, at the Beit Yaakov Yosef – Rabbi Zvi Gutman synagogue and community center in Tel Aviv. Speaking at the assembly were Rabbi Ephraim Gutman of the Romanian immigrant community, Prof. Jean Ashkenazi of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Yitzhak Ben Zvi of Tel Aviv University and the Technion, and Ronit Fisher of the University of Haifa.


24 January Ceremonial presentation of the original diary of Nelli Schlesinger of Villa Emma, Italy, written during the Holocaust. Present at the ceremony were Nelli’s children and grandchildren, Yad Vashem Publications Director Dr. Bella Gutterman, Archives Director Dr. Yaacov Lozowick (left), and Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities: Italy editor Dr. Bracha Rivlin. The diary was edited by Nelli’s daughter Amira (Levkovitch) Rom (right), and published by Yad Vashem.

13 February Annual lecture of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies, on “Shaping the Memory of the Holocaust: Germany 1945-1947.” The lecture was delivered by Prof. David Bankier, Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies, endowed by the Najmann Family, UK.

28 February Study evening marking the publication of Poems from Bergen-Belsen, 1944, (in Hebrew and Polish), by Uri Orlev. The event was held in the presence of the author, Head of the Contemporary Judaism program at Bar-Ilan University Prof. Judy Baumel, representative of the Polish Embassy in Israel Aleksandra Bukowska-McCabe, and Yad Vashem Publications Director Dr. Bella Gutterman. The event was accompanied by musical interludes for the piano and cello.

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