Highlights of Yad Vashem’s Activities in 2019

Holocaust Education – The International School for Holocaust Studies

Educational activity for youth at Yad Vashem

232,000 students from Israel and abroad, from both informal and formal educational frameworks, participated in seminars, preparatory studies for journeys to Poland and other programs of the International School for Holocaust Studies.
126,000 soldiers and officers of the IDF and other Israeli security forces participated in seminars and training days, as well as preparatory studies for journeys to Poland.
54,000 teachers and opinion-shapers from Israel and abroad participated in educational activities of the International School. The School held 1,300 seminars, 80 training days and an international conference for Israeli educators, as well as 80 international seminars and 65 study days on the Mount of Remembrance for educational professionals from around the world.
17,000 educators participated in seminars, conferences and international forums conducted by School staff members in various countries worldwide.
22,000 individuals participated in various online activities of the International School, most of them in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
1.5 million views were registered on YouTube of the films comprising the Holocaust Education Video Toolbox, a special educational platform developed by the International School.Four million views have been recorded since the platform was uploaded in 2013.

Research and Publications – The International Institute for Holocaust Research

International research conference of the International Institute for Holocaust Research

The International Institute for Holocaust Research granted the annual Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research in Memory of Benny and Tilly Joffe z”l to two recipients this year: Prof. Omer Bartov for Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, and Prof. Joanna Tokarska-Bakir for Pod Klątwą: Społeczny portret pogromu kieleckiego (Cursed: A Social Portrait of the Kielce Pogrom).
The Research Institute held one international conference, 8 international research workshops and 12 seminars for Holocaust scholars. The Institute also hosted and participated in lectures, book launches and scholarly panels and conferences throughout the year.
12 senior researchers from Israel and abroad were hosted at Yad Vashem; 7 research fellows conducted research under the auspices of the EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure) program; and 3 senior researchers were hosted as scholars-in-residence.
16 awards were granted to Master's and Doctoral students studying in Israel, and 4 awards to Doctoral students who came to Yad Vashem from abroad; 3 additional scholarships were awarded by the Institute's Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.
24 new publications were released by Yad Vashem, including 7 research studies, 6 memoirs, 7 diaries and 4 volumes of Yad Vashem Studies.

Artworks and Artifacts

100,000 people visited "Flashes of Memory: Photography during the Holocaust," on display in the Exhibitions Pavilion.
1,150 artifacts and 430 works of art were added to Yad Vashem’s Collections. The Artifacts Collection now holds 42,000 items and the Art Collection comprises 12,100 pieces.
300 exhibitions in the ready2print format were shown in countries around the world.

Righteous Among the Nations

Holocaust survivors Sarah Yanai and Yossi Mor reunite at Yad Vashem with Melpomeni Dina, one of their wartime rescuers who was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations

300 individuals were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. At the end of 2019, over 27,600 individuals had been awarded the title.

Visits and Commemorative Events

Film screening for the general public

1,070,000 people visited Yad Vashem in 2019.
40 percent of Yad Vashem's visitors were guided by its professional guiding staff, among them 750 tours for world leaders, dignitaries and official visitors.
445 tours were conducted for 890 Bnei Mitzvah.
50 World Leaders attended the Fifth International World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem entitled “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism”.
70 events were held in conjunction with Holocaust survivor and next-generation organizations, including the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies.
135 memorial services were conducted.
4,500 individuals attended screenings accompanied by a short lecture as part of the third season of Yad Vashem's Film Club in Jerusalem, Givatayim and Haifa.
20 special lectures and screenings of films for the general public were held at commemorative events and film festivals in Israel and around the world.
2,150 general public inquiries were answered.

Internet Activity

5.4 million visits from 220 countries and territories were recorded on the Yad Vashem website.
34.7 million video views have been recorded on Yad Vashem's YouTube channels in English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi since their launch.
13,500 new followers joined Yad Vashem's Facebook page. At the end of 2019, the total number of followers was 187,500.
27,600 individuals joined Yad Vashem's Twitter accounts. As of December 2019, more than 80,800 individuals were following Yad Vashem on Twitter in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish.
27,800 individuals joined Yad Vashem's Instagram account. At the end of 2019, the total number of followers stood at over 55,000.

Documentation

Personal letter from the Holocaust era donated to Yad Vashem

Seven 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 217 million pages of documentation.
350,000 pages of documentation were digitized.
Over 4,800,000 names of Holocaust victims, more than three-quarters of the victims of the Holocaust, are now documented in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. The source of more than half the total number of names in the online Names Database is from over 2.75 million Pages of Testimony, while the remainder are from archival lists and documents.
45,000 additional names of Holocaust victims were gathered, 21,000 from Pages of Testimony.
35,000 items – documents, diaries, photographs, artifacts and artworks – were collected as part of the national "Gathering the Fragments" campaign to rescue personal items from the Holocaust era. Items were donated by 1,200 individuals in 16 centralized collection days and 250 home collections across Israel. Since the project was launched in April 2011, 300,000 items have been received from 13,000 individuals.
10,000 images were added to the Photograph Archive. Yad Vashem currently houses 510,000photographs, including 210,000 attached to Pages of Testimony and housed in the Hall of Names.
1,300 new Holocaust survivor testimonies were filmed and recorded. The Archives currently house 133,000 video, audio and written testimonies.
28,000 public inquiries for archival information were answered. Of these, 6,000 members of the public were assisted in the Library and Archives Reading Room, and 22,000 were written queries.
4,000 new titles were added to Yad Vashem's Library. The world's most comprehensive collection of published material about the Holocaust now holds 174,000 titles in over 60 languages.
670 new films, including classics from the past as well as new films, were added to Yad Vashem's Film Library. 600 films from a variety of genres were catalogued, and the searchable online film catalogue now includes 12,600 titles. Over 9,500 films are available for viewing at the Visual Center.
The 14^th annual Avner Shalev Yad Vashem Chairman’s Award was awarded to director Thomas Heise for his film Heimat is a Space in Time (Germany, Austria: 2019). The annual award is presented for artistic achievement in a Holocaust-related film.