20 January 2009
In advance of the fourth International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2009, Yad Vashem is opening a number of traveling exhibitions around the world:
• The photographic exhibition “BESA – A Code of Honor: Albanian Muslims Who Rescued Jews in the Holocaust” (photographer Norman Gershman) will open on 27 January at the Municipal Museum in Ramle, in the presence of Avner Shalev and Mayor of Ramle Yoel Lavie. The exhibition, displayed with Hebrew and Arabic subtitles, comprises 17 portraits of Muslim Albanian Righteous Among the Nations and their families who went out of their way to rescue Jews, despite the grave danger this entailed. For three months following the opening of the exhibition in Ramle, Arab and Jewish students from the city will attend special educational programs at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies.
• The “BESA” exhibition will also open in New York at the University of Columbia’s School for International Relations, on 20 January.
• The “Auschwitz Album” will be displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles from 27 January. The exhibition presents the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau, caught in a photographic album discovered by one of its inmates immediately after liberation.
• “Auschwitz: From the Depth of the Abyss” will open on 27 January at the Headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels, hosted by the European Jewish Community Center. The exhibition comprises photographs from The Auschwitz Album and sketches by Jewish artist Zinovii Tolkatchev, a soldier in the Red Army who was present at the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945.
• The “No Child’s Play” traveling exhibition will open in the City Hall in Linz, Austria on 27 January. The exhibition features toys, games, artwork and poetry that allow the visitor to glimpse into the lives of children who experienced the Holocaust.
• “An Arduous Road: Samuel Bak – 60 Years of Creativity” will be displayed at the University of Mainz, Germany from 19 January. The traveling exhibition presents the six-decade-long journey of the renowned artist and Holocaust survivor, as he debated with himself about the abstract, the figurative and the gamut between them.
• The exhibition “Private Tolkatchev at the Gates of Hell” will open on 27 January in the city of Neustrelitz in Germany. The exhibition displays the sketches of Jewish artist Zinovii Tolkatchev, a soldier in the Red Army, who arrived at the gates of the Majdanek and Auschwitz death camps at the time of their liberation.
Contact: Estee Yaari / Foreign Media Liaison / Yad Vashem
