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Letter from the International Committee,
Unto Every Person There Is A Name
Yom Hashoah – Holocaust
Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day
16 April 2007– 28 Nissan 5767
Introduction
Six million Jews, of whom one-and-a-half million were children,
perished in the Shoah while the world remained silent. The
worldwide Holocaust memorial project “Unto Every Person There is a
Name”, now in its eighteenth consecutive year, is a unique project
designed to perpetuate their memory as individuals and restore
their identity and dignity, through the public recitation of their
names on Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance
Day. By personalizing the individual tragedies of the Jewish
victims of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, this project
counters persistent attempts to universalize the repercussions of
the Holocaust and cast off its principal characteristic as a
unique calamity of the Jewish people. “Unto Every Person There is
a Name” also builds appreciation of the Shoah's continuing
deleterious impact on the Jewish reality today, and helps to
frustrate continued efforts by Holocaust deniers to present the
Holocaust as a hoax.
A World-Wide Effort
“Unto Every Person There Is A Name” is conducted around the world
in hundreds of Jewish communities through the efforts of four
major Jewish organizations: B’nai B’rith International, Nativ, the
World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization.
The project is coordinated by Yad Vashem, in consultation with the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project enjoys the
official auspices of the office of the Speaker of the Knesset and
Acting President Hon. Dalia Itzik.
In Israel, the name recitation ceremonies of “Unto Every Person
There Is A Name” have become an integral part of the official Yom
Hashoah commemoration ceremonies, at the Knesset and at Yad
Vashem, as well as throughout the country.
An opportunity for reflection
While Yom Hashoah focuses our attention each year on the victims
of the Holocaust, it also inherently provides an opportunity for
us to reflect on contemporary forms of antisemitism over the past
year and recommit ourselves to counter them.
Antisemitic incidents targeting Jewish communities and individuals
around the world, particularly in Europe, continued throughout
2006. These incidents included hundreds of violent attacks -
murder, physical injury, shootings, damage to property and
desecration of Jewish sites – as well as threats, propaganda and
graffiti. As identified by the Coordinating Forum for Countering
Antisemitism, prominent characteristics of antisemitism in 2006
were:
- Effects of the Lebanon war
- Increased Holocaust denial
- Increased severity in nature of attacks
- State Antisemitism
Also, murder attempts against Jews were made in Russia and in the
Ukraine while in France, Britain, Australia, Ukraine and Russia
dozens of attacks - some requiring hospitalization – were
recorded.
State-sponsored antisemitism hit a new ugly and dangerous turning
point this year with the convening in Teheran in December of the
Holocaust-denial conference "Review of the Holocaust: Global
Vision." Conceived by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a
notorious Holocaust denier whose presidency, since his election in
August 2005, has been marked with repeated calls for Israel's
annihilation – the conference was organized by the Iranian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A poster depicting a red X,
indicating the erasure of the word "Israel" and a boot over the
globe served as a backdrop to the deliberations. Teheran's
annihilationist intentions became even more terrifying as it
reportedly further narrowed the gap towards acquiring nuclear
weapons with little real action by the international community to
stop it. The conference, and the earlier Holocaust cartoon
contest, helped to enshrine genocide and Holocaust denial as the
official policy of the Iranian Islamic Republic. With weapons of
mass destruction and the means to deliver them, along with
attendant terrorist organizations at its command, the prospect of
an impending genocide became even more tangible in 2006.
The international community reacted vigorously to ridicule the
conference and rebuff all Holocaust deniers by passing a
resolution on January 27 - the annual International Day of
Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust -
condemning without reservation any denial of the Holocaust. Only
Iran publicly disassociated itself from the consensus resolution.
As identified by Holocaust historian Robert Wistrich, the legacy
of annihilationist jihad and Jew-hatred bequeathed to Iran by the
Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution of 1979 is also what
inspires Hezbollah and Hamas today. Indeed, in Hezbollah
propaganda, Jews are invariably depicted as corrupt, treacherous,
aggressive and fundamentally racist while the Hamas Covenant
demonizes Israeli Jews as "Mongols" and "Nazis" in their allegedly
brutal behaviour towards women and children. Both organizations,
which have openly declared war on Israel, are driven by an
apocalyptic and exterminationist Jew-hatred that underlies their
geo-political strategy. This so-called "war against Zionism"
unmistakably embraces the total demonization of the Jew and
constitutes a highly toxic, even murderous outlook that today is
linked both to religious fanaticism and a worldwide revolutionary
agenda. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the
annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated" from the Jews. The
danger of such irrational hatred has become especially grave
because annihilationist anti-Zionism is gradually spreading under
the guise of anti-Israelism to Western Europe, American, Russia,
Asia and other parts of the Third World. It has also found
grassroots support in the Muslim diaspora among radicalized youth,
anti-globalists and others. This has led some observers to comment
that the prospect of a "world without Israel" is more popular
today than "a world without Jews" was in the 1930's.
Another growing source of state-sponsored antisemitism is
Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez spoke severely against
Israel as part of his struggle with the USA and his identification
with Iran, creating an antisemitic atmosphere in the country. "We
feel that Israel's aggression against Lebanon and the Palestinians
is directed also against us.... Israel reminds us of the fascistic
nature of Hitler. Israel is a part of American imperialism."
Chavez recalled his ambassador from Israel and compared Israel's
bombing of Beirut to Hitler's actions during WWII. Politicians and
journalists associated with Chavez' party used the Holocaust to
attack both Israel and the local Jewish community by comparing the
plight of the Palestinians to the Holocaust or denying it
altogether.
Collecting the Names – The Yad Vashem Database
As part of its efforts to counter these developments, Yad Vashem-
Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority -
continues this year to expand the Central Database of Shoah
Victims' Names that has been painstakingly built with the
cooperation of Jewish communities and organizations since the
1950s. To date, half of the six million victims have been recorded
and memorialized in the online Names Database at
www.yadvashem.org, where one may access their brief histories and,
when available, their photographs, and submit additional names.
With nearly half the victims’ names still missing, it is incumbent
upon us today, to recover them before the generation that
remembers is no longer with us.
Unto Every Person There is a Name” events provide a unique
opportunity to continue the quest to collect the names of all the
Jews who perished in the Holocaust and should be utilized to call
upon members of your community to complete a “Page of Testimony”
for each unregistered victim, or to volunteer to assist others
with this urgent task. This year Yad Vashem has designated the
Hebrew calendar month of Nissan (April 2007), as Names Recovery
Month, marked by the simultaneous names recovery drives in Jewish
communities around the world.
As the vast majority of Holocaust victims missing from the Names
Database are presumed to be from the territories of the Former
Soviet Union, Yad Vashem launched a Russian language interface of
the Names Database, and working in cooperation with local
organizations, has embarked on a special campaign calling upon
Jewish populations where former citizens of the Soviet Union now
reside - the FSU, Israel, Germany, the USA and Canada - to
register the unrecorded names.
"Bearing Witness" - Central
theme for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2007
Long before liberation, the Jews who experienced the Holocaust
yearned to describe their experiences in writing. Throughout the
war, many of those trapped in ghettos and camps, in hiding and in
the forests, recorded their feelings on scraps of paper often
acquired at great personal risk. As their world crumbled around
them and they were hunted and murdered in their millions, their
personal writing and creative endeavors never ceased.
The act of writing also served as a form of escape, a temporary
release from the killings and the torture, from the walls
surrounding them and the crematoria whose smoke billowed
relentlessly into the skies above. Often, their statements also
served as a last will and testament, directed at those living
outside the danger. With the war’s end, many survivors felt an
immediate need to give testimony, to tell about the pain and
suffering they went through, so it would never be forgotten or
denied. They began by giving detailed accounts to spontaneously
organized local committees, in refugee camps and before
commissions of inquiry working to investigate the war crimes of
the Nazis and their collaborators. In bulletins, newsletters and
newspapers published soon after liberation, they told about life
in the ghettos and the camps, about the invaders, about the aid
bestowed upon them by their Jewish comrades and non-Jewish
rescuers, about the nightmare death marches and the dreamlike
moments of freedom. Testimony after testimony, the foundation was
slowly laid for the archives that would document one of the
greatest tragedies in recorded history.
As early as 1945, more than 30 survivors’ diaries were printed,
with over 5,000 published since. To date, tens of thousands of
written, audio and video testimonies have been recorded, thanks to
the initiative of several individuals and organizations devoted to
perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust, including Yad Vashem,
which has the largest collection of survivors’ testimonies.
Personal testimonies have now become an influential and relevant
genre in Holocaust, Jewish and Israeli literature, motivating
generation after generation to partake in the act of remembering
Holocaust victims.
Additional materials prepared by Yad Vashem relating to this
year's central theme are attached. Lists of names for recitation
are easily available from the Yad Vashem website:
http://www1.yadvashem.org/download/index_download.html
Personalizing the
Holocaust
The International Committee of “Unto Every Person There is A Name”
takes pride in the fact that its raison d’etre – advocating the
personalization of the Jewish tragedy – has gained wide
recognition in Israel and around the Jewish world as hundreds of
Jewish communities now participate in this project. As time passes
and fewer witnesses remain, it is of great importance to create a
personal link between the Jewish people today and those who
perished under the Nazi genocidal regime. Ceremonies in which
names of Holocaust victims are recited together with such
information as age, place of birth and place of death, personalize
the tragedy of the Holocaust. Emphasis is thus put on the millions
of individuals – men, women and children who were lost to the
Jewish people and not solely on the cold intangibility embodied in
the term “The Six Million”.
Recitation ceremony planning recommendations
1. Outreach: The International Committee urges organizers of “Unto
Every Person” ceremonies to invite all Jewish organizations and
institutions in their community, including schools, synagogues of
the various streams and community centers, and Israeli diplomatic
representatives, to take an active part in the name recitation
ceremonies and in the Name Recovery Campaign. The Committee
specifically requests that members of the four sponsoring
organizations actively cooperate in order to make the ceremony as
inclusive and meaningful as possible. The Committee also
recommends that non-Jewish groups and leaders in your larger
community be invited to participate in the recitation ceremonies,
which can be held in an appropriate public setting. Local and
national media, especially television, should be encouraged to
cover the ceremonies. Any visual products from the ceremony should
be sent to Yad Vashem in order to be archived and exhibited in the
future.
2. Family names retrieval: We urge you to encourage young members
of your community to search for names of relatives and friends who
were victims of the Holocaust, to compile your own personal and
local lists of names and family members for commemoration, and to
submit names to Yad Vashem's Database (see above).
3. Names recovery campaign: Should you choose to utilize the
ceremony to kick-off a names recovery campaign, please refer to
the
online community outreach. Packed
with tips and materials, including short movie clips and print
-quality files of promotional materials, this resource will enable
Jewish communities and educators to plan and implement meaningful
programs, names collection events and related activities around
Yom Hashoah and throughout the year. Promotional posters are also
now available in English, Hebrew and Russian. (To order please
send your name, mailing address and phone number, stating how many
you require to: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il with subject
header: “Poster Order.”) Display the posters together with Pages
of Testimony (available in various languages on the Yad Vashem
website) to advertise the ongoing campaign to collect Holocaust
victims’ names.
Conditions permitting, you may screen the heartwarming story of
Hilda Glasberg, who after a lifetime of believing that most of her
immediate family had perished in the Holocaust, was reunited with
her brother Simon Glasberg after 65 years. The reunion took place
after Hilda’s grandchildren searched The Central Database of Shoah
Victims Names’ in an effort to piece together the puzzle of their
family’s fate.
Educators may make use of the
"The Stories Behind the Names",
lesson plans (Link from the Names Database) that utilize pictures
and information from Pages of Testimony, to teach about the people
and communities the Nazis destroyed. The material is geared to
varying age groups and focuses on the meaning and importance of
commemoration through Pages of Testimony, as well as the practical
aspects of collecting and completing them.
4. Ceremony requirements: The recitation ceremonies require
coordination and planning but involve very little expenditure.
Basic requirements for the ceremony are:
• Lists of names
• Pages of Testimony
• Yizkor and El Maleh Rahamim prayer texts
• Poem “Unto Every Person There Is A Name” by Israeli poet Zelda
• Yizkor candles
• A sound system
• Professional-standard video equipment (optional)
• A table or podium covered in black
• Sufficient volunteers to recite names
• Master of Ceremonies
We are available to answer any questions that might arise and
provide additional material as necessary.
Sincerely,
Members of the “Unto Every Person There Is A Name” International
Committee:
Rachel Barkai, Alexander Avraham (Yad Vashem); Alan Schneider
(B’nai B’rith International); Laurence Weinbaum (World Jewish
Congress); Naftaly Levy (World Zionist Organization); Aviva Raz
Schechter (Israel Foreign Ministry); Zvi Cantor (Nativ).
Project Initiator: Haim Roet
Committee
Members
Referents: Yad Vashem
Rachel Barkai, Commemoration and Public Relations; Ossi Kupfer,
Project Coordinator; Alexander Avraham, Hall of Names
POB 3477, Jerusalem 91034, Israel
Tel. (972)-2-6443574; Fax (972)-2-6433569
www.yadvashem.org
For more information about the Shoah Victims' Names Recovery
Project contact:
Cynthia Wroclawski, Outreach Manager
The Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project
Yad Vashem, POB 3477
Jerusalem, 91034 ISRAEL
Tel: 972-2-644-3470
cynthia.wroclawski@yadvashem.org.il
For North America
Rhonda Love
B’nai B’rith International Center for Programming
823 United Nations Plaza, Suite 715, New York, NY 10017, USA
Tel: (212)-490-3290; Fax: (212)-687-3429
Rlove@bnaibrith.org
For Eastern Europe
Dr. Laurence Weinbaum
World Jewish Congress
POB 4293, Jerusalem 91042, Israel
Tel: (972) –2-5635261; Fax. (972)-2-5635544
wjc@netvision.net.il
For Western Europe, Latin America, Australia
Naftaly Levy
WZO Department for Zionist Activities
POB 92, Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: (972)-2-6202262; Fax (972)-2-5445141
naftalil@jazo.org.il
For the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Aviva Raz Schechter
Department for Antisemitism and Holocaust Issues
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: (972)-2-5303696; Fax: (972)-2-5303159
avivar@mfa.gov.il
For the Former Soviet Union
Zvi Cantor
Nativ
8 Hamelacha St., POB 21609
Tel Aviv 67251, Israel
Tel: (972) 3 5639718/06; Fax: (972) 3 5639713
tchanim@nativ.gov.il
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