ONLINE EXHIBITION:
WEDDINGS DURING
THE HOLOCAUST
Jewish couples got married throughout the Holocaust period, in the shadow of anti-Jewish policies, dispossession, hardships, uncertainty, pervasive hunger and deprivation, and the omnipresent threat of death.
Yad Vashem
During the war years, weddings took place in occupied countries, in the ghettos, the concentration and labor camps, and in hiding. Even when no one knew what the next day would bring, people felt the need to get married. Some married for love, while many others married in order to overcome loneliness, to share a common destiny, and sometimes – in order to save their lives. The bond between two individuals in difficult circumstances became a source of stability, and at times the key to survival.
After liberation, many couples among the She'erit Hapleita (the surviving remnant) chose to get married. As well as the need for love, weddings were an expression of the survivors' determination to rehabilitate themselves, to build new lives and to resurrect the severed family lineage.
This exhibition presents the stories of Jews who decided to throw in their lot with each other and get married during the war, and Jewish couples who got married after the war in an effort to build new lives.
Fragment of the exhibition – weddings in ghettos and camps.
“Jewish men and women continued to get married even after deportation to ghettos and camps, and under indescribable conditions. Alongside those couples who married for love, and entered into the marriage in order to have someone to share the hard times with, fictitious marriages were also held in the ghettos, in the full knowledge of the officiating rabbis. These were sometimes entered into in order to improve quality of life.
Rabbi Huberband from Warsaw relates that many of these weddings took place at the point when people were forced into ghettos, in the hope of alleviating the cramped living conditions by sharing an apartment. Writers of the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto mentioned that married couples received additional food from the ghetto administration, as well as other gifts.
In other cases, weddings took place for the purposes of rescue. A man shielded from deportation due to being an essential worker or having preferential status in the ghetto, could provide the same protection for his wife, at least temporarily. In any event, marriages in this period offered much-needed companionship and partnership.”
We invite you to explore these stories of love, courage and resilience as seen through photographs, artifacts and testimonies from the Yad Vashem collection.