An opinion piece by Dr. Meir Wikler in Haaretz last week bemoans the near-total omission of Torah Jews and their Holocaust experiences from the exhibits at Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum. He writes:
According to some experts between 50%–70% of those murdered by the Nazis were “traditionally religious Jews” … But in the rooms of Yad Vashem only one of the 50–60 video monitors playing taped testimonies of Holocaust survivors shows a Haredi Jew.…
The spiritual heroism of the Holocaust is almost completely overlooked. The abundant examples of incredible courage to study Torah and perform mitzvot despite unspeakable suffering and incredible hardships are relegated to footnote status and all but eliminated from the museum. The clandestine yeshivot and Torah study groups in the ghettos the lighting of candles on Chanuka the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashana and the daily donning of tefillin in the concentration camps — all under the penalty of death — are not mentioned at all.
The massive rescue work of Haredi Jewry has effectively been purged from the historical record of the Holocaust as presented by Yad Vashem.
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