Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel’s Yad Vashem Memorial Launches Ambitious Online Commemoration Project
Source: Algemeiner
As the world prepares to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust has launched a massive online project to commemorate the six million Jewish victims of Nazism.
The “IRemember Wall” campaign — organized by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for the five days around International Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls on Jan. 27 — “provides a unique opportunity for the wider public to engage in an interactive commemorative activity,” its organizers explained in their announcement of the project.
Participants are randomly matched with one of the 4,800,000 Jewish men, women or children recorded in Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. The name of the participant, together with the name of the Holocaust victim they are matched with, will be added to Yad Vashem’s virtual “IRemember Wall” and can then be shared on the participant’s Facebook page.
It is also hoped that matching participants with Holocaust victims will also shine a light on the documentation, letters, diaries and photographs that Yad Vashem has collected, which portray the rich Jewish life that thrived in Europe before the Holocaust. as well as the tragedy experienced by those subjected to its ravages.
Yad Vashem’s intent is for the project to “enable those who wish to express their commitment to Holocaust Remembrance to do so in a simple and timely way,” said its chairman, Avner Shalev, in a statement on Thursday announcing the “IRemember Wall.”
“Yad Vashem works tirelessly to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is relevant and constant, while facing the challenge of its global dissemination,” Shalev said. “Therefore, we maintain an active presence on social media, today’s platforms for contemporary discourse.”