Highlights of Yad Vashem’s Activities in 2017

Holocaust Education – The International School for Holocaust Studies

Students participating in an educational activity at Yad Vashem

More than 325,000 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.
Some 16,000 educators attended 680 day-seminars held throughout the country for teachers and education students in Israel. Among the participants were more than 3,500 ultra-Orthodox educators.
80 training days were conducted for some 2,900 Israeli educators. 21 were for more than 400 ultra-Orthodox educators.
Some 1,200 educators participated in the biennial Israeli Teacher's Conference.
84 long-term seminars were conducted for more than 1,900 educators from abroad and 67 short seminars were held for more than 1,400 overseas participants.
Some 1,200 ultra-Orthodox teachers participated in special conferences for ultra-Orthodox educators.
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 14,900 participants in 35 different countries worldwide.
More than 8,000 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 50,000 educators and community leaders have been trained since the inception of the program.
Some 45,600 individuals participated in various online courses produced by the International School, most of them in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), entitled: "The Holocaust: An Introduction."
More than 442,000 video views were registered on YouTube of the films comprising the Holocaust Education Video Toolbox, a special educational platform developed by the International School for holocaust Studies. More than 1.1 million views have been recorded since the platform was uploaded.

Research and Publications

Mrs. Dawn Waterman-Cesarani receiving the 2017 Yad Vashem International Book Prize awarded posthumously to her husband, Prof. David Cesarani, for his book, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-1949

The International Institute for Holocaust Research granted the annual Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research posthumously to Dr. David Cesarani's for his book, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-1949.
The International Institute for Holocaust Research held 1 international conference, 8 international research workshops and 14 seminars for Holocaust scholars; the annual lecture of The John Najmann Chair for Holocaust Studies; and the annual event in memory of Prof. David Bankier, which included a central lecture open to the public and a doctoral workshop. In addition, the Institute held an international conference in cooperation with the College of the Western Galilee and Acre and the International Physicians Organization. The International Institute hosted 15 lecturers and doctoral students from US universities who came to Yad Vashem as part of the "Lessons and Legacy," research workshop headed by Prof. Hilary Earl of Nipissing University, Canada.
10 senior researchers from Israel and abroad were hosted at Yad Vashem.
The Institute granted 17 awards to Master's and Doctoral students studying in Israel, and 5 awards to Doctoral students who came to Yad Vashem from abroad; 2 additional scholarships were awarded by the Institute's Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
29 new publications were released by Yad Vashem, including 18 research studies, 2 memoirs, 5 diaries and 4 volumes of Yad Vashem Studies.

Artworks and Artifacts

New exhibition: Flashes of Memory – Photography during the Holocaust

The new exhibition "Flashes of Memory: Photography during the Holocaust" opened in the Exhibitions Pavilion.
811 artifacts and 857 works of art were added to Yad Vashem’s collections. The Artifacts Collection now holds some 31,600 items and the Art Collection comprises some 11,200 pieces.
Traveling exhibitions in a variety of languages were displayed in 30 countries worldwide. 180 exhibitions were downloaded and produced locally using the newly launched "ready2print" format.

Righteous Among the Nations

Some 450 individuals were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. At the end of 2017, some 27,000 individuals had been awarded the title.

Visits and Commemorative Events

Ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day

Over 925,000 people visited Yad Vashem in 2017.
Approximately one-third of Yad Vashem's visitors were guided by its professional guiding staff, among them more than 800 world leaders, dignitaries and official visitors.
315 tours were conducted for over 500 Bnei Mitzvah.
More than 75 events were held in conjunction with Holocaust survivor and next-generation organizations, including the Holocaust Remembrance Day.
More than 260 memorial services were conducted.
Some 1,500 general public inquiries were answered.

Internet Activity

Yad Vashem Online

Over 18 million visits from some 220 countries and territories were recorded on the Yad Vashem website.
More than 15.2 million video views were recorded on Yad Vashem's YouTube channels in Arabic, English, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Russian and Spanish since their launch.
More than 24,000 individuals became followers of Yad Vashem's Facebook page. The total number of followers is 162,000.
More than 10,000 new followers joined Yad Vashem's Twitter account. Currently, more than 34,000 individuals follow Yad Vashem on Twitter.
More than 5,000 individuals joined Yad Vashem's Instagram account. The total number of followers now stands at 16,900.

Documentation, Photographs, Names, Testimonies and Films

Yad Vashem Archives

Some 3 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 204 million pages of documentation.
Some 800,000 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 more than 4,700,000 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 52,000 names, some 21,000 from Pages of Testimony.
Staff of the "Gathering the Fragments" campaign to rescue personal items from the Holocaust era collected some 28,500 items – documents, diaries, photographs, artifacts and artworks – from some 1,170 individuals in 15 centralized collection days and 260 home collections. Since the project was launched in April 2011, more than 240,000 items have been received from 10,800 individuals.
Some 14,000 photographs were added to the Archives. Yad Vashem currently houses some 490,000 photographs, including some 166,000 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. The Archives currently house some 130,000 video, audio and written testimonies.
Some 29,000 public inquiries for archival information were answered. Of these inquiries, some 7,500 members of the public were assisted in the Library and Archives Reading Room, and some 21,500 were written queries.
Yad Vashem's Library, the world's most comprehensive collection of published material about the Holocaust, now holds over 167,000 titles in 60 languages.
260 new films, including classics from the past as well as new films, were added to Yad Vashem's Visual Center Film Library, and more than 340 from a variety of genres were catalogued. The searchable online film catalogue of the Visual Center now includes more than 11,200 titles, all of them easily accessible on Yad Vashem's website. Currently more than two-thirds of these titles, over 8,150 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 and lectures, and over 900 public inquiries for research and information regarding the Holocaust and cinema were answered.
1,500 individuals attended screenings accompanied by a short lecture as part of the first season of Yad Vashem's Film Club.
More than 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 12th annual Avner Shalev Yad Vashem Chairman’s Award was awarded to Hungarian director Ferenc Török for his film 1945. The annual award is presented for artistic achievement in a Holocaust-related film.