BREAKING NEWS

Rare Holocaust-era matza cover goes on display at Yad Vashem

A family who survived the Iasi pogrom in Romania in 1941 took with them a matza cover that has been added to a collection of Passover-related artifacts at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem.
Israel Biber was seven years old when his family fled Iasi, smuggled to safety by Romanian acquaintances after the pogrom. The matza cover was among the items they took with them to an old fishing lodge in the swamps near the Prut River, where they remained for three years. Biber’s great grandmother had embroidered the cover in 1898 with the blessing for eating matza. Biber, now a Petah Tikva resident, recently donated the heirloom to Yad Vashem’s Artifacts Collection, along with photographs of the family. The item is one of many other collected by Yad Vashem, most of which are available for viewing in an online exhibition initiated to mark the Passover holiday under the title “And you shall tell your children.”
“The imperative to remember is a significant element of the Passover holiday, and part of its tradition and rituals,” Yad Vashem states. “...Through the photos, the artifacts and the personal testimonies, we explore and remember some of the ways Passover was observed throughout Europe prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years and in the displaced persons camps and children’s homes following the war.”