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Introduction
“… And I shall give them in My house and within My walls a memorial and a name [Yad Vashem]… that shall not be cut off.” Isaiah, 56:5
During the Holocaust, the Nazis were intent on murdering every single Jew during the Holocaust. In only a few years, six million had been murdered.
ost of the victims left no trace at all of their former lives, and for some, that included their names.
As part of the project of remembering these victims, effort is invested in the commemoration of individuals. At Yad Vashem, this approach
is applied in a number of projects, the most important of which is the ongoing collection of Pages of Testimony with the names of individual victims.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established in 1953
by an act of the Israeli Knesset. The immediate implementation of memorialization and collecting of names was begun with an appeal
to Israeli citizens to fill in Pages of Testimony about their murdered relatives. Recording a victim’s name is a preservation of his/her identity,
thus thwarting the Germans’ intention of total erasure. From amidst the loss and the ashes, we have to retrieve individuals, families and the
communities that were wiped out in the Holocaust.
Educational Objectives
This lesson aims to:
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Emphasize the importance and difficulties of memorializing the victims as people - not numbers.
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Present Pages of Testimony as a special way for preserving the memory of each individual victim.
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Reveal the life stories of individuals and their communities that were lost in the Holocaust.
This lesson will focus on Pages of Testimony of children victims only.
Part 1: The Importance and Meaning of Collecting Pages of Testimony
What are Pages of Testimony?
One of the first projects undertaken by Yad Vashem in the 1950s was the collection of the names of victims with the aim of creating symbolic
tombstones for them. The Pages of Testimony include biographical information about the victims. These Pages are usually completed by relatives
or friends of the murdered victims and sent to Yad Vashem. The information found in these Pages emphasizes the fate of individuals as the central
component in the collective tragedy of the Jewish people. Through the documentation process, we are able to restore personal names of women,
men and children.
Alex Avraham, director of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, describes the case of a man who discovered the Page of Testimony on his father
who had been murdered. He took the Page to a side corner of the Hall and, holding the Page, recited Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. This story
illustrates how some people might actually relate to these Pages as a memorial in the absence of any concrete alternative. The Pages and the personal
stories they reveal to us are representative of the vast number of Holocaust victims. Through the individual stories, we get some idea of the collective
tragedy and the overriding anonymity of the tragedy becomes more personalized through the details of the child, woman and man.
Class Discussion Questions
- Why do you think Yad Vashem chose this method of remembering victims?
- What in your opinion are the advantages and disadvantages of this system?
To the Teacher
It was decided at Yad Vashem in the 1950s that a special attempt had to be made to preserve the memory of the victims in an individual fashion.
It was clear that it would be impossible to memorialize most of the names from information in the archives and thus the idea of turning to families
was born. The Page of Testimony gives us personal information providing access to the man or woman through a picture and an outline of his/her
life. The Page presents us with a name in cases where previously there was no name or memorial. The project of the Pages was developed at the
same time as the writing of the Memorial Books and the Encyclopedia of the Jewish Communities which record the memory of Jewish Communities
that were destroyed.
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To date, approximately three million names with biographical information of Jews murdered in the Holocaust have been documented in the
Yad Vashem Central Database of Names of Jewish Victims.
Why aren’t there more Pages of Testimony in our possession?
- Whole communities were obliterated and without survivors, there was no one left to bear witness. Sometimes, only a few survivors
were left and if they were young, they might not have had the same recall of names. As a result, communities of thousands are sometimes
represented by isolated names only.
- Many survivors refrained from dealing with their experiences at all because the memory was so painful. Many of these have not
filled out Pages of Testimony.
- In many cases, the fate of relatives or friends was unknown and thus, a residual hope that they might still be alive somewhere prevented
the survivor from filling out the forms attesting to their death.
- In other cases, the children or grandchildren of survivors who have passed on are unable to fill out Pages because they don’t possess enough
details of the murdered kin.
- Not everyone is aware of the existence of the project.
Part 2: Explanation and Instructions on Filling out Pages of Testimony
The class will examine together the following example of a Page of Testimony in memory of Gunter Victor answering the sample questions below.
To print the Page, click here.
The following are some of the possible sample questions:
Whose memory is documented on this Page?
How old was he when he was murdered?
Where was he born?
Where did he live before the war?
Where did he live during the war years?
What were the circumstances of his death?
Who submitted the Page of Testimony?
What is his/her relationship to the victim?
Is there an attached photograph of the victim on the Page?
How does the photograph contribute to your understanding of Gunter Victor?
What additional information would you like to have about Gunter? Does the Page provide answers to your questions?
Can you suggest any other means by which you could obtain this information?
At this point, the class will be divided up into small groups with each group receiving three or four different Pages of Testimony.
To print the Pages of Testimony, click here.
After using some or all of the above sample questions to establish the basic biographical outline of the chosen Page, the pupils can now embark
on a “Journey of Discovery”. A special project being developed by the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, the
“Journeys of Discovery” enables us to become more acquainted with the life-stories of a number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
These human stories are based on the biographical details found in the Pages.
Examples of such a “journey” can be found in the
“Stories Behind the Names: Journey of Discovery” section
of the Yad Vashem site.
After becoming acquainted with one such “journey’ from the website, the pupils in their groups can now create their own “journey” for
one of the Pages they have by using the extensive database on the Yad Vashem site.
In addition, since all the Pages of Testimony in this lesson plan are those of children, the pupils can expand their “journey” through the
Exhibition called “No Child’s Play” which appears on the website.
After completing their research, the pupils will return to the class and report on the “journey” they have constructed. The teacher can
conclude the project with a discussion about the importance of commemorating the memory of individual victims by deepening our
knowledge of them and their communities.
Addendum
Below, we have provided the main biographical details of the children whose Pages of Testimony appear in this lesson:
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Bella Fuss
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Greta Hirshova
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Joseph Lewkowicz
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Teddy Schwarz
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Henri Fuss
Bella Fuss
Bella Fuss was born in 1933 in Antwerp, Belgium to Cypra (nee Erlbaum) and Elias Fuss. The Hebrew names of Bella’s parents were
Tzila and Eliyahu. The Page of Testimony in her memory was completed by Gila Fuss who is the wife of Bella’s first cousin.
The Page was submitted to Yad Vashem in 2001. Gila Fuss provides exact information about the circumstances of Bella Fuss’s death.
She was thrown on a German transport from Antwerp to Auschwitz, Convoy XI, on the 26.12.42 and murdered two days later on December 28.
Henri Fuss
Henri Fuss was born in 1931 in Antwerp, Belgium to Cypra (nee Erlbaum) and Elias Fuss. The Hebrew names of Henri’s parents were
Tzila and Eliyahu. The Page of Testimony in her memory was completed by Gila Fuss who is the wife of Bella’s first cousin. The Page was
submitted to Yad Vashem in 2001. Gila Fuss provides exact information about the circumstances of Bella Fuss’s death. He was thrown on a
German transport from Antwerp to Auschwitz, Convoy XI, on the 26.12.42 and murdered two days later on December 28.
Hirshova Greta
Greta Hirshova was born on 30.9.1923 in Lostice, in the former Czech Republic, to Irma (nee Baderle) and Karel Hirshova. The Page of
Testimony in her memory was completed by Elise Schipper, who is Greta’s niece. The page was submitted on January 21, 1999. Elise Schipper
did not know the exact circumstances of Greta’s death, but she testified that it occurred in Treblinka on November 15, 1942.
Joseph Lewkowicz
Joseph Lewkowicz was born on April 10, 1933 in Lodz, Poland. His parents were Bella-Dvora (nee Shugal) and Zisman Lewkowicz.
They lived on 39 Sienkiewicza in Lodz, and were later closed into the Lodz ghetto. Joseph died in Auschwitz in 1944. The Page of
Testimony was submitted in 1998 by Michael Lee (originally Lewkowicz), Joseph’s brother.
Teddy Schwarz
Teddy Schwarz was born in New York, United states in 1924 to Serena Friedmann. He was a student and single. Prior to WWII he lived in
New York, United states. During the war, he lived in Ruzomberok, Czechoslovakia. Teddy perished in 1942 in the Shoah at the age of 18.
The Page of Testimony was submitted in 1997 by Mrs. Stella Marosh.
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Encyclopedia
Further Activity
Testimony
