“There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times”
Abel Herzberg
Close to 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Each and every one of them was a unique individual with a rich inner world, with thoughts, fears, hopes and ambitions. Each and every one of them had a family, be it large or small, with parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Each and every one was an entire world.
These families were affiliated with Jewish communities in the cities and towns where they lived. The community members were their friends, with whom they studied, worked and marked lifecycle events. They helped one another in hard times, and people of means supported the penniless.
The Holocaust severely damaged most of the Jewish communities in Europe. The Germans and their collaborators murdered the Jews and attempted to obliterate all outward signs of the Jewish communities' existence. Synagogues and cemeteries were destroyed, as were other institutions that were central to the community prior to World War II. Over half of the almost 11 million Jews populating Europe and the Mediterranean Basin were murdered - close to two-thirds of the Jews living in Nazi-occupied territory. Almost no family was left unscathed. In many cases, returning Jews discovered that no one from their family had survived, and that only a handful of community members were still alive. Many of these communities never recovered, and in the majority of cases the surviving members left what they had once called home and sought to build their lives and communities anew in other countries and on other continents.
This exhibition tells the stories of Jewish families during the Holocaust, stories that are interwoven with the history of the communities from which they came. The stories are based on items from the Yad Vashem Collections.
