On 24 January, Dayan will open the new exhibition at the Bundestag together with Bundestag President Bärbel Bas. The exhibition, entitled “Sixteen Objects,” was initiated by the German Society for Yad Vashem to mark Yad Vashem’s seventieth anniversary.

 

Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan will travel to Germany for the first time ever to open a new Yad Vashem exhibition in the Bundestag, the federal parliament, entitled “Sixteen Objects.”

During this historic visit, in the framework of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Dayan will meet several high-ranking German officials, including  President Frank Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as German-Jewish community leaders.

On 24 January 2023, Dayan will open the new exhibition at the Bundestag together with Bundestag President Bärbel Bas. The exhibition, entitled “Sixteen Objects,” was initiated by the German Society for Yad Vashem to mark Yad Vashem’s seventieth anniversary.

It features unique Holocaust-era items, one from each of the Federal States of Germany, whose stories are intertwined with individual Jews hailing from across Germany.  The exhibition features archival items from Yad Vashem’s Collections juxtaposed with contemporary photos of the places from where they originally came.

“By connecting the personal stories of these objects with the current modern locations in Germany, the exhibition creates a bridge between the memory of the past to present and future societies,” said the exhibition co-curators, Executive Director of the German Society for Yad Vashem Ruth Ur.

“The items presented, which are part of the Yad Vashem’s Collections – both large, like the piano that once belonged to the Margulies family, or small, as in the case of Lore Mayerfeld’s childhood doll that dons the pajamas she wore the night of the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) – are a reminder of the countless lives and communities destroyed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.”

Also present at the exhibition’s opening will be German lawmakers, German-Jewish community leaders, Israel’s Ambassador to Germany H.E. Mr. Ron Prosor and Chairman of the German Society for Yad Vashem Kai Diekmann.

“I travel to Germany for the first time in my life, well aware of my deep responsibility to the past as well as my commitment, more than ever before, to ensuring a better future,” declared Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan.

“The weight of the memory of the six million mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – murdered less then eighty years ago simply because they were Jewish – is at the forefront of my responsibilities as the Chairman of Yad Vashem. At the same time, we are acutely aware of divisive antisemitic and xenophobic social elements currently at play in Germany and around the world,’’ he added.

‘’On this important visit, I will open an exhibition featuring objects whose owners were persecuted and even exterminated by their own countrymen and have since found their home in the Jewish homeland, the State of Israel. Through these personal stories, we will ensure that the last wishes of the victims of the Holocaust are fulfilled: that the world will know who they were and why they were murdered,” Dayan said.