Yad Vashem: Israel’s Official Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust

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Yad Vashem: Israel’s Official Memorial…

YAD VASHEM 10-25

The State of Israel’s official memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, Yad Vashem, was established in 1953. It also honors the Gentiles (“Righteous Among the Nations”) who saved Jews from the Holocaust at great personal risk. The 44.5-acre complex, located on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl, houses memorials, museums, a research institute, a library, an educational center, a synagogue, and outdoor sculptures.

Quote: “The name ‘Yad Vashem’ is taken from a verse in the Book of Isaiah: ‘To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.’ Naming the Holocaust memorial ‘yad vashem’ conveys the idea of establishing a national depository for the names of Jewish victims who have no one to carry their name after death.” — Wikipedia

Sources: Wikipedia

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Notable &
Quotable

“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.