Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority

In 1953, the Israeli Knesset enacted the Yad Vashem Law, which determined that among its other missions, the task of Yad Vashem is “to collect, examine and publish testimony of the disaster and the heroism it called forth…”. Indeed, efforts to document the Holocaust had begun long before the passage of the law. The Yad Vashem Archives began its official activities in 1946. It is the biggest archive specializing in the Holocaust. The first documents arrived here from the “Historical Commissions” and various documentation centers, as well as public institutions, researchers and private individuals. Material collected in Israel was added to the documentation collected by Jews during the war in the ghettos, camps and hiding places. Since its establishment, the Archive has initiated activities with a view to collecting and copying Holocaust related documents that have been housed in various archives in Europe and throughout the world. With the fall of the “Iron Curtain” and the opening of archives in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, the reproduction project has been greatly expanded. The materials undergo an intake and organization process; they are catalogued in stages in a professional manner and stored under optimal conservation conditions. Documents requiring individual preservation are treated in the restoration laboratory. Investigations in the Archives are requested from academic contexts as well as from private individuals.