August 19: Yad Vashem

The Israeli Knesset passed the Yad Vashem Law on this date in 1953, establishing Israel’s official Holocaust memorial museum. The name was derived from Isaiah 56:5: “And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a hand/memorial (yad) and a name (vashem) that shall not be cut off.” Yad Vashem is a 45-acre complex that includes a deeply compelling Children’s Memorial and the vast Holocaust History Museum, as well as a memorial to the “Righteous Among the Nations,” non-Jews who risked their lives to help Jews during the Nazi period. Over the past two summers, Palestinians in their twenties and thirties from Ramallah, Hebron and other towns were organized by a Palestinian student at Bard College to visit Yad Vashem — a first in the history of the Museum.

“These, for me, are objects of Jewish veneration. The display showing the actual spectacles with cracked lenses worn by Janusz Korczak made me cry out.”
—Lawrence Bush, “Making Friends with Israel,” https://jewishcurrents.org/past-issues/historical-archive/ (under “I” for “Israel”)

Watch Eudaldo Mirapeix Martinez, Spanish Ambassador to Israel, speaking at the March 12th, 2008 ceremony at Yad Vashem at which the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” was awarded to the late Eduardo Propper de Callejon of Spain. This is the most recently posted (August 15, 2013) of more than 500 videos on the Yad Vashem YouTube channel: