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Introduction
“… And I shall give them in My house and within My walls a memorial and a name [Yad Vashem]… that shall not be cut off.” Isaiah, 56:5
On July 19, 1944, sixty-two years ago, the Germans started concentrating the Jews of Rhodes and Kos in one location. A few days later,
they were loaded onto boats and transported to Athens. During the eight days of the voyage, they stopped at the island of Leros in order
to pick up the solitary Jew who lived there. Some time after arrival in Athens, they were all loaded again onto trains and four weeks after
their initial detention, they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Virtually everybody who survived the tortuous journey was immediately murdered in
this extermination camp.
The Nazis were intent on murdering every single Jew during the Holocaust. In only a few years, six million had been murdered. Most of the
victims left no trace at all of their former lives, and for some, that included their names.
As part of the project of remembering these victims, effort is invested in the commemoration of individuals. At Yad Vashem, this approach
is applied in a number of projects, the most important of which is the ongoing collection of Pages of Testimony with the names of individual victims.
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established in 1953 by an act of the Israeli Knesset.
The immediate implementation of memorialization and collecting of names was begun with an appeal to Israeli citizens to fill in Pages of
Testimony about their murdered relatives. Recording a victim’s name is a preservation of his/her identity, thus thwarting the Germans’ intention
of total erasure. From amidst the loss and the ashes, we have to retrieve individuals, families and the communities that were wiped out in the Holocaust.
In 1995, Yad Vashem, together with the Ministry of Education, continued with a project called “Collecting and Preserving”. The aim was not
only the continued collection of additional names of victims but also the collection of testimonies, documents and personal objects.
To date, three million names have been collected, half of the number of Holocaust victims. The other three million have yet to be documented
and continue to exist only in the memory of survivors, family members, friends or acquaintances. We are behoven to do our utmost to save as
many names as possible.
This lesson is in preparation for the project of collecting Pages of Testimony designed for the upper grades. After the lesson, the class should be
divided up into pairs and each pair will meet with a survivor to help him/her with the details on the form. The following lesson is divided into two
parts: The first part deals in general with the importance and meaning of Pages of Testimony and the second part deals with the practical side of the project.
Following is a suggestion to schools located in areas where there are no survivors or too few to implement the practical part of collecting
Pages of Testimony. In this case, Part Two on the Filling out of the Pages is unnecessary and we recommend proceeding to
Lesson Two.
Educational Objectives
This lesson aims to:
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Emphasize the importance and difficulties of memorializing the victims as people - not numbers.
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Make students aware of the project of collecting Pages of Testimony to preserve the memory of each individual victim.
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Encourage the students’ feelings of responsibility through their direct participation in the project.
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Students will also appreciate the aging survivor generation and the immediate need to record the names of victims and any other relevant information.
Part 1: The Importance and Meaning of Collecting Pages of Testimony
During the Holocaust, some of the victims realized that nothing of their world would remain. In spite of their circumstances, they wrote poetry,
diaries and anything that would serve as a reminder to others after the war about the lost world of the murdered victims.
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Ask students to suggest possible ways to memorialize Holocaust victims.
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One of the ways Yad Vashem has chosen to commemorate the victims is the project of collecting Pages of Testimony.
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What are Pages of Testimony?
One of the first projects undertaken by Yad Vashem in the 1950s was the collection of the names of victims with the aim of creating
symbolic tombstones for them. The Pages of Testimony include biographical information about the victims. These Pages are usually
completed by relatives or friends of the murdered victims and sent to Yad Vashem. The information found in these Pages emphasizes
the fate of individuals as the central component in the collective tragedy of the Jewish people. Through the documentation process,
we are able to restore personal names of women, men and children.
Alex Avraham, director of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, describes the case of a man who discovered the Page of Testimony on his
father who had been murdered. He took the Page to a side corner of the Hall and, holding the Page, recited Kaddish, the prayer for the
dead. This story illustrates how some people might actually relate to these Pages as a memorial in the absence of any concrete alternative.
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Ask students about which details should be included on a Page of Testimony.
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Should only the bare essentials be given or should there be additional information such as a person’s hobbies, education and spheres of activity?
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Note to the Teacher:
Ask students to examine the Page. What do they notice?
What kind of information is requested about this person?
What other kind of information would you be interested in knowing about him and why? |
As you see on the Page, only information of the victim’s identity is requested: Name, Place of Residence, Number of Children, Profession etc. Why?
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Pages of Testimony requesting wider information would take longer to fill out and the express objective was to receive as many names as possible.
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It should be pointed out to the pupils that more detailed Pages of Testimony would provide us with a fuller picture of the victim but
this would also demand more time and a greater effort on the part of the submitter which could decrease the number of Pages actually submitted.
It is important to remember that many pages are submitted without all the information and sometimes even with minimal information because of
the growing time divide from the Holocaust.
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In the 1950’s, a two-year national project of collecting names was inaugurated. Between 1955-1957, special registration stands were
established in different cities throughout the country and people were requested to go to the stand nearest their homes and fill out Pages of
Testimony. In this situation, it was impossible to fill out expanded forms. The same limitation existed for “Door to Door” projects where volunteers
went to peoples’ homes with Pages of Testimony.
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In November, 2004, the central database of victims’ names was uploaded onto the Yad Vashem site. It is now possible to fill out
Pages of Testimony on the site and consequently the information requested has to be concise. It should be noted that during the first year and
a half since the upload date, some 54,000 new Pages of Testimony had been sent
in, roughly three times the number for the same period prior to that date.
Class Discussion Questions
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Why do you think Yad Vashem chose this method of remembering victims?
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What in your opinion are the advantages and disadvantages of this system?
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What are the limitations and difficulties of preserving memory through Pages of Testimony?
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Note to the Teacher:
Educators may wish to address the question with their students whether Pages of Testimony can be considered “forms”. Forms are often
required to be filled out when one applies for a passport, a mortgage or when one registers for a school and in endless other bureaucratic
situations. What is different about these Pages in comparison to other such forms? Teachers may want to explain that this form is essentially
different from most forms demanded by other bureaucratic structures. It is obviously different from forms instituted by the Nazis in the different
camp contexts where inmates’ identities were reduced to numbers. In addition, it was decided at Yad Vashem in the 1950s that a special attempt
had to be made to preserve the memory of the victims in an individual fashion. It was clear that it would be impossible to memorialize most of the
names from information in the archives and thus the idea of turning to families was born. The Page of Testimony gives us personal information
providing access to the man or woman through a picture and an outline of his/her life. The Page presents us with a name in cases where previously
there was no name or memorial. The project of the Pages was developed at the same time as the writing of the Memorial Books and the Encyclopedia
of the Jewish Communities which record the memory of Jewish Communities that were destroyed. |
Why aren’t there more Pages of Testimony in our possession?
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Whole communities were obliterated and without survivors, there was no one left to bear witness. Sometimes, only a few survivors were
left and if they were young, they might not have had the same recall of names. As a result, communities of thousands are sometimes represented
by isolated names only.
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Many survivors refrained from dealing with their experiences at all because the memory was so painful. Many of these have not filled out Pages of Testimony.
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In many cases, the fate of relatives or friends was unknown and thus, a residual hope that they might still be alive somewhere prevented the
survivor from filling out the forms attesting to their death.
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In other cases, the children or grandchildren of survivors who have passed on are unable to fill out Pages because they don’t possess enough
details of the murdered kin.
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Not everyone is aware of the existence of the project.
How can one help with the project of collecting Pages of Testimony?
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Note to the Teacher:
This question is best dealt with through a class discussion of the best ways available to the pupils for collecting Pages of Testimony in
their community and in the vicinity of their homes: Clubs with activities for the elderly and old-age homes can be considered. Pupils fluent in
different languages might be able to use them in some cases. |
Part Two Explanation And Insrucions On Filling Out Pages Of Testimony
The teacher will present a completed Page of Testimony to the class and will point out the information to be filled in on the form.
Presentation
Following is a presentation on the various aspects of Pages of Testimony. For the presentation,
click here.
Slide No.1
The Page of Testimony of Fritz Stern
What details from the life story of Fritz Stern can be discovered from the Page of Testimony submitted in his name?
Suggested Student Activity
The pupils could be encouraged to construct as much of Fritz Stern’s life story according to their understanding of the information on the Page.
For an example of this activity for other Pages of Testimony,
click
here.
Fritz Stein was born in Hannover, Germany. His date of birth is not given. His parents’ names were Bertha and Adolf
(which was an acceptable first name in German-Jewish circles before Hitler’s rise to power). He married a woman, Dolly
Stein, and he worked as an attorney before the war. At some stage in the late 1930s- there are no dates given for the
period before the war on this Page of Testimony - Fritz Stern appears to emigrate to Amsterdam in The Netherlands. In
1940, the German army invades The Netherlands. The only information given about his death is the date of October 1942
in the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen. We can assume that he was arrested in Amsterdam and after a period of
incarceration in Westerbork, the infamous German transit camp in Holland, he was transported to his eventual death in Bergen Belsen.
It should be noted that Fritz Stern’s route from prewar life in Germany to escape to Holland and then his forced transportation back to
Bergen Belsen in Germany is the same as that of Anne Frank and her family’s ill-fated wanderings.
The Page of Testimony was submitted to Yad Vashem by Fritz Stern’s sister-in-law, Bella Stein, from Australia.
Classroom Discussion Questions
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What challenges might a Holocaust survivor face on filling out a Page of Testimony for a murdered relative or friend?
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Where does the will to fill out a Page of Testimony, sometimes even several, stem from?
Before pupils approach survivors to fill out these Pages, they should be reminded that for some of them, the task of recalling
difficult memories might be a painful process and consequently they might be unwilling to cooperate. In such a situation, the
importance of recording the names of family members for posterity should be emphasized together with the reality of diminishing
opportunities to do this.
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Instructions for Completing Pages of Testimony
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Carry about twenty Pages of Testimony with you to your meeting with a survivor.
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Write the details in ink, clearly and in capitals.
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Ask a specific question for each field to be filled.
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Give the victim a name and don’t refer to him as the victim because sometimes the survivors also relate to themselves as victims.
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Record the names in Latin letters and as close as possible to their original spelling.
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Be sure to add the date of the completed Page of Testimony with the person’s signature.
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Slide No.2
Basic information necessary on a Page of Testimony
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The basic information needed on a Page of Testimony is:
Private name, family name, permanent home address and place of birth.
After recording the above information, it is preferable to add as many more details as possible. Sometimes people think
that they can’t fill out a Page of Testimony unless they have all the information requested. This is not so. Even if most of
the information is missing, the form should be made out. If the survivor adds information for which there is no available field,
the information should be written down on a separate sheet and attached to the main form.
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Note to the Teacher:
Sometimes pupils have difficulty understanding how family members don’t remember the private names of their relatives.
Try asking these pupils to recall the names of all their cousins….
Most of the survivors had much larger families that often lived in distant locations and thus not all the names were known
to all. Despite this, the need to record all victims remains valid even if full names are not known to the survivor.
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Slide No.3
The photograph
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On every form there is a place to attach a photograph of the victim. Unfortunately, the majority of Pages do not have
photographs attached. Some Pages have a photograph of the victim in his/her childhood and not representative of the victim in
later life. In general, a photograph at any age is preferable to no photograph and should be attached to the form. A group photograph
with an arrow identifying the victim should be used if available.Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names has also received Pages of Testimony on
which the person who submitted the Page drew a portrait of the victim in the absence of an existing photograph.
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Slide No.4
A separate form for each victim
It is important to fill out separate Pages of Testimony for each child murdered in a family and not to include them on their parents’ forms.
Slide No.5
An old Page of Testimony with a child’s name included on his parent’s form.
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What is the difference between old Pages of Testimony and the newer Pages? Compare slides nos. 5 and 4.
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How does this change improve the process of documentation?
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Slide No. 6
Circumstances of Death
Some of the submitters of Pages of Testimony know exact details of the circumstances of death, whereas others only have partial
information and some don’t have any information at all.
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What factors could explain such varied levels of information?
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What is the importance of knowing exact details of victims’deaths?
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The pupils should be very sensitive and understanding when dealing with this section of the form. If the survivor has no knowledge of
the victim’s death, the specific field should be filled with “died in the Holocaust” - unless the survivor insists on some other wording.
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Slide No 7.
Information about the person submitting the Page.
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The people who have submitted Pages divide into different groupings:
Some are survivors giving information about victims from their own families; others are survivors submitting Pages in memory
of friends or people from the same town and a third group comprises people born after the war. In some cases, survivors
chose to ‘spare’ their children about their Holocaust experiences but then opened up to their grandchildren. As a result we
find many Pages that have been submitted by grandchildren.
A family connection is not a prerequisite for filling out a Page. There were many small towns and villages with only a few Jewish
survivors left to provide information about the murdered.
In principle, the person submitting a Page should have some personal connection to the victim. This includes cases where the
person submitting the Page might have been a witness to the victim’s murder
In certain cases, Pages have been submitted by people without direct contact to the victim but who had done research on the
life and death of a specific victim. (In such cases, it is requested to attach the necessary documents to the Page of Testimony).
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After collecting the Pages of Testimony and ensuring that the submitter has signed at the bottom of the form, they
should be posted via airmail, not folded, to the following address:
The Hall of Names, Yad Vashem, P.O. Box 3477, Jerusalem, 91034, Israel.
Since all the names on the Pages of Testimony have been uploaded onto the site of Yad Vashem, there have been hundreds of
cases of survivors discovering the existence of relatives long considered murdered. An example recently highlighted by the Yad
Vashem Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 43, Fall 2006 describes how Simon Glasberg reunited with his sister Hilda Schlick after having
no information one about the other for sixty five years. The reunion was occasioned by Hilda’s grandchildren searching the Yad
Vashem internet site of all recorded victims’ names. The whole story can be accessed in the magazine which is uploaded on the site.
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Encyclopedia
Further Activity
Testimony