Yad Vashem

Israel's memorial to the Holocaust is both a place of remembrance and an extensive museum about pre-Nazi Jewish life and how that changed during the war. I had not been back since 1973, and in 2005, the place reopened its new facilities designed by architect Moshe Safdie. Beautiful yet overwhelming, solemn but not morbid, comprehensive yet human are how I would describe the place.

Today, I browsed their website to see if they had in their database three of my father's first cousins whom we know were shot by the Nazis in 1941 when the Einsatztruppen followed the frontline troops to massacre Jews in village after village. I saw similar names from within the region, but no exact matches, so I added a Page of Testimony for each one: Zushe, Jacob and Shaindel Fogel. We know little about them, only their parents' names and that they died in 1941. Perhaps I will find more about them eventually to add.

If you are interested, the website is www.yadvashem.org.

Until next time...

Rick