Yad Vashem, Facebook Partner For Online Project To Commemorate Holocaust Victims

Yad Vashem, the official Israeli memorial dedicated to preserving the memory of Holocaust victims, announced that it partnered with Facebook for a second year for a commemorative online project called the “IRemember Wall.” The project asks for participants’ names after which they are linked randomly to the name of a Holocaust victim and posted together on the wall.

The project, launched ahead of the UN-sanctioned International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Holocaust marked on January 27, draws the names from Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, which includes the names of 4.8 million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

The IRemember Wall is available in six languages – English, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German and Russia – according to Yad Vashem, and creates “a meaningful opportunity for people all over the world to remember the victims of the Holocaust in their own language,” explained Iris Rosenberg, Director of Yad Vashem’s Communications Division in a statement.

“By partnering together with Facebook International, we are able to reach a wider international audience, which is crucial in keeping the memory of the Jewish victims alive and the meanings of the Holocaust relevant to the challenges of today’s reality,” she said.

This is the second year that Yad Vashem has partnered with Facebook for the IRemember Wall. In 2019, Yad Vashem said the project reached 700,000 Facebook users in 149 countries.

This year, a new feature was added where participants are matched with the name of a Holocaust victim, after which they can add additional names and share information about these individuals via Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

“Each Holocaust victim has a personal story, and social media users can therefore become ambassadors of memory, responsible for promulgating the voices of those who were murdered,” Yad Vashem said.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in the statement that visiting Yad Vashem this past summer while on a trip to Israel “was a moment I will never forget.”

“I am so grateful for all that Yad Vashem does to honor the victims of the Holocaust – including this incredible IRemember Wall project. Facebook is honored to be a part of the project and help tell the story of the millions of women, men, and children murdered by the Nazis and those who were complicit in their murder. They deserve to be remembered so this never happens again,” added Sandberg.

January 27 marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. This year is the 75th anniversary of that liberation.

Last week, 49 delegations from countries across North America, Europe, and Asia converged in Jerusalem for the Fifth World Holocaust Forum by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation in cooperation with Yad Vashem and the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The forum put forth a mission to combat the global spread of anti-Semitism.