03 July 2024
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, proudly announces the opening of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem, on Monday, 8 July 2024. This significant endeavor marks a new era in the preservation and dissemination of Holocaust history and memory.
At the heart of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus lies The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center. This state-of-the-art facility is the world’s most advanced repository for the collection, preservation, restoration, and storage of Holocaust-related materials, including documents, photographs, testimonies, artifacts, artworks, and the world-renowned Pages of Testimony collection, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Each item housed here tells a unique story—stories of individuals, families, and communities that endured the tragic events of the Holocaust.
The new center is equipped with cutting-edge technologies to ensure the optimal preservation of these invaluable national treasures. An oxygen reduction system prevents fires, while climate supervision, air filtration, and digital control systems maintain ideal storage conditions. Advanced laboratories handle all aspects of preservation from registration to storage to conservation; both for our museum's use and archival purposes, ensuring that each item is treated with the utmost care and made accessible for future generations.
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan remarked:
"Yad Vashem has painstakingly collected and gathered Holocaust survivor testimonies, artifacts, documents, photographs and artwork ensuring that the voices of those who survived and the victims of the atrocities of the Holocaust are told. The item housed in this new Collections Center are the everlasting witnesses of these Jews. They will remain so that the world will know who they were; as Benjamin Fondane, who was murdered in Auschwitz, poignantly wrote: 'Remember only that I was innocent and that, like all of you, mortals of this day, I too had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy. An ordinary human face!'". Benjamin's story, and the stories of millions who met a similar fate, are woven into the very fabric of Yad Vashem. The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center are not merely repositories, rather they are sanctuaries of memory and education; ensuring that the memory of the six-million endures, honoring their lives and their stories for the next generations to behold".
About the Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus:
Covering an area of 5,880 square meters of the Mount of Remembrance, The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus also includes several other key facilities in addition to The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center:
The Joseph Wilf Curatorial Center: Built to provide the Museums Division with optimal working and office conditions, this center enhances collaboration between departments. The expanded facilities include larger workspaces and a new conference room.
Video Art Wall:
Created by renowned video artist Ran Slavin, curated by Yad Vashem Director of Museums Collections and Archives Medy Schwed and sponsored by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, the video art wall entitled "122,499 Files" is a unique installation, showcasing over 100,000 artifacts, artworks, photographs and documents from Yad Vashem's collections, many of which are too delicate and fragile to be displayed. This innovative and immersive medium allows the public to engage with Yad Vashem's vast and diverse collections, many items of which are being viewed for the very first time. The 44:44-long video can be viewed in the Wolfson Gallery, located in the entrance lobby of the new David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center.
Auditorium and Exhibition Halls:
Also planned for the Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus is a new innovative auditorium, providing a facility to seat over 300 people. The Auditorium will host a diverse variety of events throughout the year. The spacious Auditorium Foyer houses exhibitions, which are frequented by visitors to Yad Vashem.
Today, Yad Vashem holds approximately 227.6 million pages of documentation, 2.8 million Pages of Testimony, 541,500 Holocaust-era photographs, 31,000 artifacts, and 14,000 works of art. Each item represents a personal story from the Holocaust era, making Yad Vashem the guardian of these precious memories.
For photos of the new Campus and Collections Center please click here.
