SIXTEEN OBJECTS
FROM YAD VASHEM
ON DISPLAY IN GERMANY
Lore Mayerfeld, who's doll, is included in this exhibition remarks:
"We made the decision to donate my doll to Yad Vashem as a family," said Lore Mayerfeld. "At home Inge can only serve to remind me and my family of the atrocities we witnessed and endured, but at Yad Vashem Inge (the name of the doll given by Lore as a child) can tell our story to the world. This is why I go to Germany. To tell my story and the stories of the Six Million who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators and who they tried to erase all evidence and traces of their existence. These objects are witnesses to their lives and their stories that they never had the opportunity to tell. Through this exhibition and the work of Yad Vashem, we bring the memory out of the past and into the present."
Exhibition co-curators Executive Director of the German Society for Yad Vashem Ruth Ur and Director of the Yad Vashem Artifacts Department Michael Tal state:
"By connecting the personal stories of these objects with the current modern locations in Germany, the exhibition creates a bridge between the memory of the past to present and future societies. The items presented, which are part of the Yad Vashem's Collections – both large, like the piano that once belonged to the Margulies family, or small, as in the case of Lore Mayerfeld's childhood doll that dons the pajamas she wore the night of the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) – are a reminder of the countless lives and communities destroyed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust."
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan explains:
"I travel to Germany for the first time in my life, well aware of my deep responsibility to the past as well as my commitment, more than ever before, to ensuring a better future. The weight of the memory of the six million mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – murdered less then eighty years ago simply because they were Jewish – is at the forefront of my responsibilities as the Chairman of Yad Vashem. At the same time, we are acutely aware of divisive antisemitic and xenophobic social elements currently at play in Germany and around the world. On this important visit, I will open an exhibition featuring objects whose owners were persecuted and even exterminated by their own countrymen and have since found their home in the Jewish homeland, the State of Israel. Through these personal stories, we will ensure that the last wishes of the victims of the Holocaust are fulfilled: that the world will know who they were and why they were murdered."
The exhibition features archival items from Yad Vashem's Collections juxtaposed with contemporary photos of the places from where they originally came.
"We hope that the objects and their local histories will spark interest and a new way of engaging with the past," conclude the curators.
The exhibition will be on display in the Bundestag for four weeks, and then travel to Essen to be exhibited at the Ruhr Museum before returning home to Israel.
On 24 January 2023, Yad Vashem Chairman Dayan opened a new exhibition at the Bundestag together with Bundestag President H.E. Ms. Bärbel Bas. The exhibition, entitled "Sixteen Objects," was initiated by the German Society for Yad Vashem (Freundeskreis) to mark Yad Vashem's seventieth anniversary. It features unique Holocaust-era items, one from each of the Federal States of Germany, whose stories are intertwined with individual Jews hailing from across Germany.
Yad Vashem