On January 26, 2023, in the lead-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, Yad Vashem will be inaugurating a unique display at UN Headquarters in NY – The Yad Vashem Book of Names of Holocaust Victims.  The Book will be on display for 3 weeks, and will then travel to Jerusalem where it will remain on permanent display at Yad Vashem, on the Mount of Remembrance.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis endeavored to obliterate the identity of each and every Jewish man, woman, and child. Since the 1950s Yad Vashem has worked tirelessly to gather the names of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.  To date, Yad Vashem has gathered names in a decades long project that continues to this day. The “Book of Names” memorializes each of the 4,800,000 individuals whose names are commemorated in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names.  Every name, birth date, hometown and place of death is clearly printed on the meter-high pages, illuminated by a gentle strip of light that lies between each page. The monumental size of the book – 58 “volumes” of 140 pages each, 500 names per page, measuring 2 meters high and 14 meters in circumference – attests to the collective, immeasurable loss to the entire Jewish people, and to humanity. The blank pages of the book’s final volume, symbolize the names still to be redeemed, recorded and memorialized in perpetuity by Yad Vashem. 

Hope this gives you a little more background.  More about the Central Database of Holocaust Victims’ Names is online, and we of course have experts who can explain about the expertise used to gather the names in this vital mission, about the importance of this commemorative initiative and about the book itself.