Memory. Full of life, yet haunted by absence, by everything that stayed in the past.
Yad Vashem’s exhibition Living Memory demonstrates that the act of preserving memory can be more than remembering the past; it keeps the Jewish people’s history alive.
Launched on October 31, 2025, Living Memory was developed as a tool to share Yad Vashem’s preservation work with the public.
The globally recognized museum is known for its unique way of sharing the history of the Holocaust through permanent monuments and historical exhibitions.
But a question that arises in the public’s mind is: How does the museum preserve all the objects, once owned by Jews who died or survived the Holocaust, that have been sent from all over the world?
The answer lies behind the scenes, and that is exactly what Living Memory reveals.
Behind the archive
For the first time in almost 40 years, Yad Vashem obtained a new repository for its historical items.
“We have wonderful exhibitions, but we had a major change for Yad Vashem, which is to have all of its collections treasured and preserved in one place. We probably have the best repository in the region, and the public doesn’t know about it. So I thought the public should know about it,” Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, the curator of the Living Memory exhibition, told The Jerusalem Report in a recent interview.
As a result, the exhibition was developed to share the highlights of each of Yad Vashem’s treasure collections, giving the public an opportunity to glimpse the Jewish people’s history.
“We can connect to the stories and to the people… through their personal objects, through their letters, through their diaries, or through their artwork. We have a window to their souls, and so that was the idea behind the exhibition,” Moreh-Rosenberg said.
When entering the space dedicated to the Living Memory exhibition, the visitor is immediately welcomed by “The World As It Was,” a corridor dedicated to creating an intimate connection between the public and the art installation.
The first glimpses of the exhibition offer a time travel to a past still untouched by the Nazis, creating a sensation of being in “our grandparents’ house,” Moreh-Rosenberg said, with items such as an old guitar and a ketubah to create familiarity.
Mapping remembrance
The exhibition is then organized according to the three stages of cognitive memory, an essential aspect of the human mind.
The opening section addresses immediate memory, represented by personal objects from Holocaust victims who did not survive. Among them is an illustrated book from a father to his son explaining how to carry out daily tasks.
This section reflects an understanding that the victims sought to fight for survival through memory, as their physical opportunities were minimal.
The second section addresses short-term memory, represented by personal objects belonging to Holocaust survivors who tried to gather every existing piece of information “to honor the memory of their loved ones, communities… and also collect evidence of the crimes perpetrated against the Jews,” Moreh-Rosenberg highlighted.
One example in the exhibition is “The Auschwitz Album,” containing hundreds of photographs documenting the horrors and daily routine of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
The final section of the exhibition addresses long-term memory, also known as collective memory – when memory also talks through symbols. This part focuses on the main symbols of the Holocaust, such as the yellow star, which every Jew was required to wear as a form of identification, and the striped uniforms worn in the camps.
The goal: Never forget.
After moving through all three memory stages, the visitor reaches the “Behind the Scenes” section, which was created to show how each item in Yad Vashem’s collection is preserved, catalogued, and restored in order to keep the memory alive across generations.
Personal histories
Among the stories told in the exhibition, two in particular draw curious eyes: Genia’s closet and Hilde’s sheet music.
In 1942, a 16-year-old Genia, born Chaya Gitel Sznajder, hid in a closet in the home of Christian neighbors who had agreed to help her escape the Nazis.
The officers came to the family’s house after learning that Jews were being hidden in the village and asked the mother to open the closet where Genia was concealed. She claimed the door was locked and that she had lost the key, so a soldier took his bayonet and stabbed the closet, puncturing a hole in the door to check whether anyone was inside.
Finding no evidence of life, the officers left, and Genia survived. Today, the original closet, with the bayonet hole in it, is featured in the Living Memory exhibition.
In April 1943, young Hilde was imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Selected to join the women’s orchestra, she contributed as a violinist and later as an assistant to conductor Alma Rosé, helping improve conditions and support fellow inmates.
Hilde survived the camp, and later Bergen-Belsen. She preserved memories of those who saved lives through courage and solidarity, eventually immigrating to Israel after the war. Her sheet music can be found in the exhibition.
Genia and Hilde’s stories are now preserved for eternity, but not every object becomes a living memory. Over the years, Yad Vashem has received hundreds of objects with no reference at all to their owners.
In November 2025, according to Moreh-Rosenberg, the museum reached the milestone of five million names identified among the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. She told the Report that the number is undoubtedly remarkable, but every soul has a name and a story, and one million of them may never be known.
May their memory be a blessing.■