Highlights of Yad Vashem’s Activities in 2016

Holocaust Education – The International School

• More than 300,000 students from Israel and abroad, soldiers and officers of the IDF and other Israeli security forces participated in seminars and programs of the International School for Holocaust Studies and at the School’s branch in Givatayim.

• 28,885 educators attended 884 day seminars that were held throughout the country for teachers and education students in Israel. Among the participants were 3,238 ultra-Orthodox educators. 

• 101 training days were conducted for 4,935 Israeli educators. Among these were 35 for 1,138 ultra-Orthodox educators.

• 230 Jewish day school principals and senior Jewish studies educators attended the School's International Conference "The Shoah and Jewish Identity."

• 71 long-term seminars were conducted for some 1,519 educators from abroad and 51 short seminars were held for 1,036 overseas participants.

• Some 2,000 ultra-Orthodox teachers participated in the conference "Continuity within the Rupture."

• School staff members, together with Yad Vashem seminar graduates around the world, participated in seminars, conferences and international forums and conducted educational activities for some 14,200 participants in 35 different countries worldwide.

• Some 7,000 teachers across the US received training as part of “Echoes and Reflections,” a joint multimedia program created by Yad Vashem, the ADL and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. Some 38,200 educators and community leaders have been trained since the inception of the program.

• 30,000 individuals participated in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), entitled: "The Holocaust: An Introduction." There have been 60,000 worldwide participants since the course was launched in the fall of 2015. The course was developed cooperatively by Yad Vashem and Tel Aviv University.
• More than 40,000 video views were registered on YouTube of the films comprising the Holocaust Education Video Toolbox, a special educational platform developed by the Yad Vashem's Virtual School. During 2016, 5 films were added to the platform.

Research and Publications

• The International Institute for Holocaust Research granted the 6^th annual Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research in memory of Abraham Meir Schwarzbaum, Holocaust survivor, and his family members murdered in the Holocaust. The 2016 recipient was Dr. Kim Wünschmann for her book, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps. 

• The International Institute for Holocaust Research held 1 international conference, 5 international research workshops and 26 workshops for Holocaust scholars; the annual lecture of The John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies; and the annual lecture in memory of Prof. David Bankier, which included a central lecture open to the public and a doctoral workshop. In addition, the Institute held 2 international conferences in cooperation with Yad Ben-Zvi and Bar-Ilan University. During 2016, the Institute hosted the 7^th Claims Conference workshop for recipients of its research scholarships, as well as an EHRI workshop in conjunction with archives from Europe, the US, and Israel.             
• 10 senior researchers from Israel and abroad were hosted at Yad Vashem.

• The Institute granted 16 awards to Master's and Doctoral students studying in Israel, and 6 awards to Doctoral students who came to Yad Vashem from abroad.

• 30 new publications were released by Yad Vashem, including 9 research studies, 10 memoirs, 7 diaries and 4 volumes of Yad Vashem Studies.

Artworks and Artifacts

• 1,087 artifacts and 174 works of art were added to Yad Vashem’s collections. The Artifacts Collection now holds some 30,870 items and the Art Collection comprises some 10,400 pieces.

• Traveling exhibitions were displayed in 9 countries worldwide in a variety of languages.

Righteous Among the Nations

• 390 individuals were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. At the end of 2016, more than 26,500 individuals had been awarded the title.

Visits and Commemorative Events

• Some 800,000 people visited Yad Vashem in 2016.

• Approximately one-third of Yad Vashem's visitors were guided by its professional guiding staff, among them more than 850 world leaders, dignitaries and official visitors.

• 270 tours were conducted for over 400 Bnei Mitzvah.

• More than 70 events were held in conjunction with Holocaust survivor and next-generation organizations, including the Holocaust Remembrance Day and VE Day ceremonies. 

• More than 270 memorial services were conducted.

• Some 2,000 general public inquiries were answered.

Internet Activity

• Over 18.6 million visits from some 220 countries and territories were recorded on the Yad Vashem website.

• More than 12.8 million video views were recorded on Yad Vashem's YouTube channels in English, Hebrew, Spanish, Farsi, Russian, Arabic and German since their launch.

• More than 21,000 individuals became followers of Yad Vashem's Facebook page. The total number of followers as of December 2016 was 137,600.

• More than 8,200 new followers joined Yad Vashem's Twitter account. As of December 2016, more than 23,800 individuals follow Yad Vashem on Twitter.

• More than 7,000 individuals joined Yad Vashem's Instagram account. The total number of followers as of December 2016 was more than 11,200

Documentation, Photographs, Names, Testimonies and Films

• Some 11 million pages of Holocaust-era documentation were gathered by Yad Vashem. To date, Yad Vashem’s Archives, the largest and most comprehensive repository of its kind, contain some 201 million pages of documentation.

• Some 1 million pages of documentation were digitized.

• Yad Vashem has identified more than two-thirds of the victims of the Holocaust. The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names now contains some 4.7 million names of Holocaust victims, all of which are accessible online. The source of more than half the total number of names in the Names Database is over 2.7 million Pages of Testimony, while the remainder is from archival lists and documents. 

• The Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project gathered some 72,000 names, some 23,000 from Pages of Testimony.

• Staff of the "Gathering the Fragments" campaign to rescue personal items from the Holocaust era collected some 41,000 items – documents, diaries, photographs, artifacts and artworks – from some 1,360 individuals in 21 centralized collection days and 342 home collections. Since the project was launched in April 2011, more than 212,000 items have been received from 9,640 individuals.

• Some 12,000 photographs were added to the Archives. Yad Vashem currently houses some 477,000 photographs, including some 154,000 photographs attached to Pages of Testimony and housed in the Hall of Names.

• Some 1,100 new Holocaust survivor testimonies were filmed and recorded, aided by an outreach program enabling survivors to have their testimonies filmed at home. Some additional 1,400 testimonies recorded elsewhere were also acquired. The Archives currently house some 129,000 video, audio and written testimonies.

• Some 32,000 public inquiries for archival information were answered. Of these inquiries, some 7,000 members of the public were assisted in the Library and Archives Reading Room, and some 25,000 were written queries.

• Yad Vashem's Library, the world's most comprehensive collection of published material about the Holocaust, now holds over 161,000 titles in 60 languages.

• This year 800 new films, including classics from the past as well as new films, were added, and more than 900 from a variety of genres were catalogued. The searchable online film catalogue of the Visual Center now includes more than 10,800 titles, all of them easily accessible on Yad Vashem's website. Currently more than two-thirds of these titles, over 7,900 films, are available for viewing at the Center. 

• Among the thousands of visitors to the Visual Center, more than 70 groups of students, teachers and filmmakers took part in Holocaust-related film programs, including lectures on film and the Holocaust and over 1,000 public inquiries for research and information regarding the Holocaust and cinema were answered.

• 30 special lectures and screenings of films for the general public were held at commemorative events and film festivals in Israel and around the world.

• The 11^th annual Avner Shalev Yad Vashem Chairman’s Award was awarded to the late Chantal Akerman for her film, No Home Movie. The annual award is presented for artistic achievement in a Holocaust-related film.