On Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, the State of Israel unites in commemorating the six million Jews murdered by the German Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust. It is a day of personal and collective memory, which continues to evolve in Israel's public arena.
Now in its fourteenth year, the "Shaping Memory" competition invites contemporary Israeli artists to express their sense of the Holocaust’s complex and diverse layers of significance – through a visual prism.
This year’s competition to design the official poster marking Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day focused on the theme, "A Lost World: The Destruction of the Jewish Communities".
"The post-Holocaust Jewish world found itself in a jarringly harsh new reality: millions of Jews had been murdered, and with them, an array of venerable communal institutions and a wealth of Jewish civilization had been obliterated. In many locations, survivors attempted, as best they could, to reconstitute and renew their communities. In Israel and other countries to which survivors immigrated, many formed Landsmannschaften, associations of survivors from specific places that served as communities of remembrance for many years after most of their original members had been murdered, their institutions destroyed and their survivors dispersed all over the world. Hundreds of destroyed communities were commemorated in Yizkor (memorial) books. This was a monumental enterprise initiated by Holocaust survivors, together with community members who had left Europe before World War II in order to commemorate a glorious chapter of Jewish history: the Diaspora community.
The legacy of the Jewish community is one of the most magnificent and cherished treasures that Jewish history has bequeathed to us. The destruction of the communities during the Holocaust is a deep wound inflicted upon the body and soul of the Jewish people. Delving into the history of the Jewish community and studying its destruction helps to illustrate the enormity of the calamity and the catastrophic loss suffered by the Jewish people during and following the Shoah." (Excerpt from Yad Vashem's rationale for this year's designated theme).
The Winning Poster
The winning poster was designed by Israeli graphic designer and illustrator Ira Ginzburg, who runs a studio for illustration, branding and creative design. Ira's grandmother's family was murdered in the Ukraine forests during the Holocaust. Her grandmother, Frieda Teitelman, survived the Holocaust and went on to build a family. Frieda's story is one of life and continuity. The new branches depicted in the poster symbolize the rejuvenation of Frieda's family, rebirth and growth emerging from the devastation.
From the judges' deliberations on choosing the winning poster:
This year's winning poster depicts a town, symbolizing a typical Jewish community. The composition resembles a tree of life extending upwards, poetically and implicitly echoing the destruction of the Jewish community, an almost abstract phenomenon existing in the heavenly realms that was brutally removed from the real world, represented by the city map "below". The community's structure is portrayed as a tree of life that ascends infinitely, resonating with the Jewish people's eternal nostalgia for the communal existence that was destroyed.
The poster is simultaneously abstract and concrete; the impeccable composition illustrates the multidimensional void left by the obliteration of these communities within the Jewish and broader historical and cultural landscape. Some houses within the community are hollow, with only their outlines remaining, powerfully symbolizing the absence of its residents - an absence rendered eternal by the comprehensive and systematic nature of the extermination. In this way, the poster effectively communicates the human narrative encapsulated within the broader tragedy.
The ethereal depiction of the community's presence across worlds echoes the timeless work of painter Marc Chagall, serving as yet another poignant reminder of the multifaceted assaults on Jewish culture perpetrated in the effort to annihilate the Jewish people and their heritage.
