Yad Vashem : ‘Gathering the Fragments’

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Monday May 26, 2014 visited the ‘Yad Vashem’ holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Estee Yaari is Foreign media liaison there, she tells Philippa Hitchen about a special project called ‘Gathering the Fragments’, a National Campaign to Rescue Personal Items from the Holocaust Period, from diaries to letters to photographs to artefacts. An effort, Estee Yaari says, to gather further items connected to the holocaust that are to this day kept by the people of Israel in their homes. Items which might otherwise get lost or decay over the years.

Listen to Philippa Hitchen's interview with Estee Yaari is Foreign media liaison at Yad Vashem:

A project  which has the purpose of implementing the archive of the centre as those who bring their contributions might share their stories. Stories  which could eventually connect to those  already gathered at the memorial for posterity.

Yad Vashem, Estee Yaari tells Philippa, welcomes over at least a million people each year many of whom are young people. They  visit in a bid to learn about the holocaust. That’s why, she says, we try to make this centre relevant and meaningful to these new generations by telling the stories of individuals: “ We are trying to recover the names of each and every  person who was murdered. Right now we know approximately 4.3 million of the 6 million and that’s an effort that continues all the time, around the clock, around the world".