Yom Ha Shoah: Names and Memory

Tonight begins Yom ha Shoah, Israel and the Jewish world’s annual day of remembrance of the Holocaust. As we have done in the past (and also on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January), we highlight some of the many monuments and memorials that keep alive the memory of those who were murdered — and the living Jewish worlds that were destroyed — by naming names.

Though many Holocaust memorials are massive constructions or different types of sculptural monuments, others are more personal, listing the names — often thousands of them, and often just the first names — of those who died, or using fragments of shattered gravestones from destroyed Jewish cemeteries to construct memorial walls. Or specifically noting individually Jewish communities that were destroyed.

Here are some….. We have posted some of these images in the past, but it is always important to remember. May the memories of those recalled here be a blessing; may their souls be bound up in the bond of life.

In the former synagogue in Lostice, CZ, now an education and culture center, memorial exhibits about individual victims have been mounted in the book-cupboards in the pews. Each includes material, memorabilia, histories and other information.

Personalized memorials also include the more than 70,000 “stumbling stone” or “stolpersteine” commemorative cobblestones around Europe placed by the German artist Gunter Demnig as a memorial art project in front of the houses of people who were deported. More and more continue to be added.

 

 

 

Names and ages of victims are written on stones in a simple memorial in the Jewish cemetery in Nova Cerekev, CZ.

The concept was similar to that of the Holocaust memorial at a ruined synagogue in Plzen, Czech Republic.