Keeping time: How Jews preserved ritual and hope in the Holocaust’s darkest days
An exhibition at Yad Vashem explores how Jewish communities maintained religious rituals and a sense of time during the Holocaust. Despite extreme conditions, Jews found ways to observe holidays, mark the Sabbath, and preserve cultural identity. The exhibit highlights personal artifacts and photographs, including a Hanukkah ceremony in Westerbork transit camp.
- ▪The exhibition documents Jewish life before and during the Holocaust with photographs, artifacts, and personal testimonies.
- ▪Jews in ghettos and camps risked their lives to observe religious practices such as lighting Shabbat candles and celebrating Hanukkah.
- ▪A 1943 photo from Westerbork transit camp shows a clandestine Hanukkah candlelighting ceremony.
- ▪The exhibit emphasizes how maintaining rituals provided psychological resilience and a sense of continuity.
- ▪Yad Vashem curated the display to illustrate the persistence of Jewish identity under Nazi persecution.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Keeping time: How Jews preserved ritual and hope in the Holocaust’s darkest daysYad Vashem exhibition chronicles the times and lives of Jewish communities before and during the Holocaust. A Hanukkah candlelighting ceremony at the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands, December 1943. (photo credit: Rudolf Werner Breslauer, Yad Vashem Archive)
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com.