Hebrew prayers scrawled on the back of Romanian wine labels are displayed as part of the “Living Memory” exhibit at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
By LARRY LUXNER, Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston), March 5, 2026. Click for full report.
JERUSALEM — A guitar played by Jewish teenager Nina Simon of Skopje, Yugoslavia. A shortwave radio that once belonged to Raphael Ahav of Lyon, France. An embroidered prayer shawl, or tallit, used by 7-year-old Yosef Valdman of Borsczców, Poland.
These everyday artifacts are among 33 displayed in glass cubicles at the entrance to “Living Memory” — a new exhibit at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
What these items all have in common is that none of their owners lived to see the end of World War II — all were victims of the Nazi horror that took six million Jewish lives. The exhibit explores how memory is formed and passed on, through personal objects that tell extraordinary — and at times, unbelievable — stories, along with rare Holocaust-era documentation and compelling artwork.
“These personal items serve as bridges between past and present, as evidence of what happened,” said Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, chief art curator at Yad Vashem, which is located on Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. “Some of them deal with religion, others with daily life. We ask ourselves the question, what is memory? And how will we transmit this memory when the direct witnesses to the Holocaust will no longer be among us?”
Moreh-Rosenberg added: “All of us know Holocaust survivors, but the next generation will not. Our challenge is to make these memories more present and tangible.”
That challenge has taken on added urgency, given that roughly only 200,000 Holocaust survivors remain alive worldwide today. Their average age is 87, according to the Claims Conference.
The “Living Memory” exhibit is designed to offer museum-goers a firsthand encounter with a Jewish world that no longer exists. The objects on display range in size from a tiny pocket watch used by Yaakov Ostfeld of the Romanian town of Vatra Dornei to the full-sized wardrobe, salvaged from a house in Poland, in which Jewish teenager Genia Sznajder hid in 1941, the wooden door punctured by a German soldier’s bayonet.
