Prof. Yaffa Eliach was born Yaffa (Sheinele) Sonenson in 1935, in the town of Eishishok, Poland (in Polish, Ejszyszki; today Eišiškės, Lithuania). At that time, some 3,000 Jews lived in the Eishishok, a substantial proportion of the town's population. Many Jewish institutions existed in the town, which combined classic Litvak Judaism with modern haskalah (education), alongside widespread activities of the Zionist movement. After the occupation of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union in September 1939, the town was annexed, together with the entire Vilna region, to independent Lithuania. The Jewish educational, cultural and youth group structures were closed down by the Soviets with the annexation of Lithuania to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940.
Nazi Germany conquered Eishishok in June 1941, and for two days at the end of September, close to Rosh Hashanah 1941, almost all of the Jews of the town were murdered by the Einsatzgruppe A at the local Jewish cemetery. On the eve of the massacre, six-year-old Yaffa Sonenson fled into hiding with her father Moshe, her mother Zipporah (née Katz) and her brother Yitzhak. The family moved from refuge to refuge, escaping death a number of times, until Eishishok was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944. Zipporah and Chaim, her infant born during the war, were killed after liberation by the Polish Armia Krajowa (Home Army) in October 1944.
Yaffa immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1946, and went to live with her uncle, Shmuel Sonenson, later reuniting with her brother and father. In 1953, she married Rabbi David Eliach, and the couple moved to the United States, where Yaffa began her academic studies at Brooklyn College. She completed her doctorate in Russian History and Literature at the City University of New York in 1973, and then established the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn. She was one of the pioneers in Holocaust research and education in the United States, and among the first researchers who collected and based their studies on the oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors. In 1978, she was appointed to President Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Holocaust, headed by Prof. Elie Wiesel. The Commission led, among other things, to the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC in 1993. Prof. Eliach served on the directorate of the museum for many years. Some 1,500 pictures from her personal archives make up the "Tower of Faces," which became one of the seminal features of the permanent exhibition at the USHMM.
Prof. Eliach passed away in New York on 8 November 2016 and is buried in Israel. In view of her profound love for Zionism, the Land of Israel and the Hebrew language, her family transferred her life's work for everlasting preservation at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
