Behind Elana Karniel a display case is bolted to the wall, a faded and yellowed
map of her journeys as a young refugee that is on exhibit behind protective
glass. Karniel, who was sixyears- old when the Nazis invaded her hometown of
Warsaw in September 1939, stood inside the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in
Jerusalem yesterday and mused about why she had decided to donate this
item.
People are forgetting the Holocaust, she asserted.
“Even I,
myself, am forgetting. I completely forgot that Polish that was my birth
language.”
Yitzchak Schein, another survivor attending the exhibit
opening, agreed with this assessment, saying that he donated personal
photographs to Yad Vashem to make sure that Israelis continue to have an
understanding of their bloody history.
Karniel’s map was drawn by her
brother after their arrival in Israel and commemorates their journey as part of
the group of refugee children that accompanied the Free Polish Army from Russia
to Persia before being brought to Israel by the Jewish Agency. As a member of
the so-called Tehran Children, Karniel arrived on Israel’s shores an
orphan.
“My brother was both mother and father to me,” she said. She
donated the map that he drew, she explained, “because I thought that my children
won’t watch over it.”
The map, as well as other items, is part of
“Gathering the Fragments: Behind the Scenes of the Campaign to Rescue Personal
Items from the Holocaust,” a new exhibit that Yad Vashem unveiled yesterday in
commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Karniel, Schein
and several others whose donations were chosen to be displayed were in
attendance.
In 2011, Yad Vashem and the National Heritage Program at the
Prime Minister’s Office, together with the Education Ministry and the Senior
Citizens Ministry, initiated the “Gathering the Fragments” campaign in order to
rescue personal items from the period of the holocaust.
At the launch of
the project in 2011, Yad Vashem archives director Dr. Haim Gertner noted that
“many Holocaust survivors and their families have personal documentation in
their homes that is not known or accessible to the public at large. Many of
those who have this material are unaware of its great importance and the need
for its professional preservation.”
According to Yad Vashem, in the time
since, “a great variety of documents, certificates, diaries, photographs,
artifacts and artworks from the Holocaust era that were in the homes of private
individuals in Israel have been given to Yad Vashem for
safekeeping.”
“Since the Gathering the Fragments campaign began,” noted
Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev, “thousands of Israelis have decided to part
with personal items close to their hearts, and through them share the memory of
their dear ones who were murdered in the Holocaust. Thus far, some 71,000 items
have been donated to Yad Vashem during the campaign, of which only a few are
displayed in the exhibition. Through these examples, we have tried to bring to
light items whose stories both explain the individual story and provide
testimony to join the array of personal accounts that make up the narrative of
the Holocaust.”
The museum described the project as “eleventh-hour rescue
campaign” to preserve items that would otherwise be lost to
history.
Among the items on display, and representing only a small
portion of the total number of objects collected, were a one-eyed teddy bear,
children’s sweaters, a pair of tefillin, and several paintings and
photographs.
Benedikt Haller, the German Deputy Ambassador and a former
special envoy for anti-Semitism and Holocaust affairs, helped mark International
Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem. His government, he said, entered into
an agreement with Israel to support the fragments initiative for the coming
decade.
“I think that the method you choose of collecting the
information, [through] pictures and documents but also objects of daily life, is
a very appropriate way getting in touch with history, getting emotionally in
touch with history and also helping education,” Haller said.
“Making it
accessible in an emotional, personal way is important for all
generations.”
According to exhibit curator Michael Tal, “the majority of
items donated to Yad Vashem during the campaign have come via secondor
third-generation descendants of the survivors and others who possess items from
their families in Europe. Therefore, most of the information we receive about
the items is, at best, only partial.
The exhibition therefore showcases
the research work carried out at Yad Vashem in order to reconstruct the full
story behind each item. We are committed to learning as much as possible about
everything that comes to us, and to sharing new insights with the greater
public.”
The new method of crowdsourcing historic memorabilia, Tal told
The Jerusalem Post, was decided upon “in order [for us] to meet the wider public
that had not found it’s way to Yad Vashem.”
“The tactic of our collection
changed,” Tal stated. “It started with advertising in the press and forging
connections with community centers. We thought that people should be able to
donate their own items and explain their significance.
People had items
moldering in storerooms and closets and we called upon the public to bring them
to us.”
The underlying concept, he noted, was to bring small items that
help people connect to the holocaust.
“Everyday items and personal
stories are sometimes better grasped and can generate more empathy.”
One
item that gathered a crowd was a pocket taken off of a concentration camp
uniform. As Tal spoke, the swatch of fabric could be seen behind him, a small
pin thereon engraved with the names of the camps in which Polish Jew Yakov
Berkowitz was imprisoned.
He did not survive the war.