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I'm a PhD student researching the role of the archaeological dead in contemporary British society. Think of this as a scrapbook of all the interesting links, snippets of information and random bits and bobs I come across pertaining to death, dying and the dead. Enjoy?!

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    Escaping the train to Auschwitz On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later. In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in. They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance. Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water. “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says. (Source: BBC News)

    Escaping the train to Auschwitz

    On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later.

    In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in.

    They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance.

    Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water.

    “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Escaping the train to Auschwitz On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later. In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in. They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance. Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water. “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says. (Source: BBC News)

    Escaping the train to Auschwitz

    On 19 April 1943, a train carrying 1,631 Jews set off from a Nazi detention camp in Belgium for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. But resistance fighters stopped the train. One boy who jumped to freedom that night retains vivid memories, 70 years later.

    In February 1943, 11-year-old Simon Gronowski was sitting down for breakfast with his mother and sister in their Brussels hiding place when two Gestapo agents burst in.

    They were taken to the Nazis’ notorious headquarters on the prestigious Avenue Louise, used as a prison for Jews and torture chamber for members of the resistance.

    Today, Gronowski lives a two-minute walk from this building, where he was held for two nights without food or water.

    “My parents had made a mistake - only one, but a serious one, which was… to have been born Jewish - a crime that, at the time, could only be punished by death,” he says.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Poland’s Jews: A forgotten history Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test. How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here. This was clearly seen last November with the premiere of the movie Poklosie (“Aftermath”), a fictional thriller that told the story of a Polish man who returns to his hometown and discovers a dark secret about its past. During the war, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people, including his own father, rounded up the town’s Jews, locked them in a building and set it on fire. In the last 10 years or so it has become widely known that massacres like this actually happened in several Polish towns, most notably in Jedwabne, north-eastern Poland, where Poles at the instigation of the Nazis murdered more than 300 Jews. (Source: BBC News)

    Poland’s Jews: A forgotten history

    Poland is marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Friday, one of the most remarkable acts of resistance in World War II, a period when the almost 1,000-year-old history of Polish-Jewish relations underwent its most severe test.

    How Poles and Jews behaved toward each other during 1939-1945 is still being evaluated and remains highly provocative here.

    This was clearly seen last November with the premiere of the movie Poklosie (“Aftermath”), a fictional thriller that told the story of a Polish man who returns to his hometown and discovers a dark secret about its past.

    During the war, at the instigation of the Nazis, local people, including his own father, rounded up the town’s Jews, locked them in a building and set it on fire.

    In the last 10 years or so it has become widely known that massacres like this actually happened in several Polish towns, most notably in Jedwabne, north-eastern Poland, where Poles at the instigation of the Nazis murdered more than 300 Jews.

    (Source: BBC News)

    Tears of a concentration camp survivor on 68th anniversary of Buchenwald liberation where Nazis killed 56,000 men  With tears in his eyes as he holds roses in his left hand, Petro Mischtschuk poignantly stands on the grounds of a Second World War concentration camp where more than 50,000 people lost their lives. The 87-year-old Ukrainian survivor of the appalling Buchenwald yesterday laid flowers at a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the camp outside Weimar, eastern Germany. Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war died in the camp between 1937 and 1945. (Source: The Daily Mail)

    Tears of a concentration camp survivor on 68th anniversary of Buchenwald liberation where Nazis killed 56,000 men 

    With tears in his eyes as he holds roses in his left hand, Petro Mischtschuk poignantly stands on the grounds of a Second World War concentration camp where more than 50,000 people lost their lives.

    The 87-year-old Ukrainian survivor of the appalling Buchenwald yesterday laid flowers at a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of the camp outside Weimar, eastern Germany.

    Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war died in the camp between 1937 and 1945.

    (Source: The Daily Mail)

    The colour of darkness: Vivid pictures of first Nazi concentration camps give chilling insight into the dawn of the Holocaust These horrifying colour pictures show the conditions endured by the first victims of Hitler’s concentration camps. The camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor. The images, posted on Vintage Everyday, show the earliest victims of Hitler’s murderous regime and harrowingly chronicle what they were forced to endure. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA, SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organised numerous detention camps to incarcerate and torture their opponents. Read more.

    The colour of darkness: Vivid pictures of first Nazi concentration camps give chilling insight into the dawn of the Holocaust

    These horrifying colour pictures show the conditions endured by the first victims of Hitler’s concentration camps. The camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933 immediately after Hitler became Chancellor.

    The images, posted on Vintage Everyday, show the earliest victims of Hitler’s murderous regime and harrowingly chronicle what they were forced to endure.

    In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA, SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organised numerous detention camps to incarcerate and torture their opponents.

    Read more.

    Commonwealth war graves: 8,000 Wales plots signposted More than 8,000 war graves around Wales are to be given a higher profile in a bid to emphasise local history on people’s doorsteps. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is placing signs at 1,145 cemeteries and churches to highlight memorials to soldiers killed in World Wars I and II. Smartphone QR codes are also planned to give people historical information at some of the main sites. The commission said many people are unaware there are war graves in Wales. Cardiff and Pembrokeshire are among the first areas to be given the signs, which will be placed at the entrances to cemeteries and church graveyards to say there are war graves at the site. More signs are planned for 1,145 locations over the next few years to highlight the 8,015 war graves from the two world wars that are scattered throughout Wales. In addition, some sites, including Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff and St Margaret’s Church in Bodelwyddan, will have more in-depth historical information signs. QR codes will also be placed alongside them so that people can scan them with their smartphones to find out more details about the soldiers buried there. Peter Francis, from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) - which maintains graves from the two world wars - said the ambitious UK-wide project was important in order to raise awareness. “Most people know about the war cemeteries abroad - in France and Belgium, in the desert and in the far east,” he said. “We are keen to raise awareness of our war graves in Wales and to remind people that there are very powerful reminders of the human cost of the two world wars on your doorstep.” Read more.

    Commonwealth war graves: 8,000 Wales plots signposted

    More than 8,000 war graves around Wales are to be given a higher profile in a bid to emphasise local history on people’s doorsteps.

    The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is placing signs at 1,145 cemeteries and churches to highlight memorials to soldiers killed in World Wars I and II.

    Smartphone QR codes are also planned to give people historical information at some of the main sites.

    The commission said many people are unaware there are war graves in Wales.

    Cardiff and Pembrokeshire are among the first areas to be given the signs, which will be placed at the entrances to cemeteries and church graveyards to say there are war graves at the site.

    More signs are planned for 1,145 locations over the next few years to highlight the 8,015 war graves from the two world wars that are scattered throughout Wales.

    In addition, some sites, including Cathays Cemetery in Cardiff and St Margaret’s Church in Bodelwyddan, will have more in-depth historical information signs.

    QR codes will also be placed alongside them so that people can scan them with their smartphones to find out more details about the soldiers buried there.

    Peter Francis, from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) - which maintains graves from the two world wars - said the ambitious UK-wide project was important in order to raise awareness.

    “Most people know about the war cemeteries abroad - in France and Belgium, in the desert and in the far east,” he said.

    “We are keen to raise awareness of our war graves in Wales and to remind people that there are very powerful reminders of the human cost of the two world wars on your doorstep.”

    Read more.

    Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network twice as big as previously thought Researchers have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. The network of camps and ghettos set up by the Nazis to conduct the Holocaust and persecute millions of victims across Europe was far larger and systematic than previously believed, according to new academic research. Researchers conducting the bleak work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death. The figure has shocked academics and more than doubles an earlier finding by the same team that up to 20,000 sites were used. It casts a disturbing new light on the sheer scale of the machinery of imprisonment and oppression put in place by the Nazis throughout Europe, from Italy to Russia. The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented. The editors of the vast project, which is being compiled from hundreds of scholars into seven volumes due to be published by 2025, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania. The work, whose latest findings caused surprise among Holocaust academics when they were presented in Washington in January, draws together previously disparate records from dozens of archives, memorial sites and research bodies to create the first comprehensive catalogue of the facilities. Read more here.

    Astonishing new research shows Nazi camp network twice as big as previously thought

    Researchers have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death.

    The network of camps and ghettos set up by the Nazis to conduct the Holocaust and persecute millions of victims across Europe was far larger and systematic than previously believed, according to new academic research.

    Researchers conducting the bleak work of chronicling all the forced labour sites, ghettos and detention facilities run by Hitler’s regime alongside such centres of industrialised murder as Auschwitz have now catalogued more than 42,500 institutions used for persecution and death.

    The figure has shocked academics and more than doubles an earlier finding by the same team that up to 20,000 sites were used. It casts a disturbing new light on the sheer scale of the machinery of imprisonment and oppression put in place by the Nazis throughout Europe, from Italy to Russia.

    The team behind the research, based at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, told The Independent that they believe the evidence could also be crucial to survivors trying to bring cases for compensation against Germany and other countries for time spent in camps whose existence was hitherto obscure or undocumented.

    The editors of the vast project, which is being compiled from hundreds of scholars into seven volumes due to be published by 2025, estimate that between 15 million and 20 million were killed or imprisoned in the facilities set up by the Nazis and puppet regimes in occupied countries from France to Romania.

    The work, whose latest findings caused surprise among Holocaust academics when they were presented in Washington in January, draws together previously disparate records from dozens of archives, memorial sites and research bodies to create the first comprehensive catalogue of the facilities.

    Read more here.

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis. She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child. Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation. The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables. Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin. The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan. “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims. Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims. “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.” Read more here.

    Victims of Nazi anatomists named

    Liane Berkowitz was just 19 years old when she was executed by the Nazis.

    She was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 when they caught her putting up posters that displayed messages of protest against an exhibition of Nazi propaganda. She was pregnant at the time of her arrest, but this just led to her execution being postponed until after the birth of her child.

    Liane’s grim story did not end in her death; her body was one of thousands that were delivered to anatomists and used for dissection and experimentation.

    The identity of victims who met this same fate is now coming to light thanks to researchers who are scouring legal records to identify the victims of Nazi terror who ended up on anatomists’ dissection tables.

    Liane was one of 182 people whose corpses were claimed by the anatomy researcher Hermann Stieve, who, at the time, was a leading anatomist at the University of Berlin.

    The full names of the people on “Stieve’s list” - the vast majority of whom were women - has now been published by Dr Sabine Hildebrandt, a German-born anatomist based at the University of Michigan.

    “Stieve himself put this list together in 1946,” explained Dr Hildebrandt, who has been investigating the history of German anatomy for a decade. Stieve’s own thorough record of his macabre work has enabled her to identify his victims.

    Stieve’s crimes have been exposed, but Dr Hildebrandt has now focused her efforts of telling the stories of his victims.

    “I wanted to find out who these people were,” Dr Hildebrandt told the BBC. “I wanted to make them known again.”

    Read more here.

    Fury over artist who claims he used ash from Nazi concentration camp crematorium in his painting A Swedish artist has caused outrage after exhibiting artwork which he claims to have painted using ashes gathered in the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp. Carl Michael von Hausswolff stole the ashes from Majdanek concentration camp in Poland during a 1989 trip and over two decades later, mixed it with water and used it as paint. He has now been reported to the police for desecrating the remains of Majdanek’s Holocaust victims, under Swedish burial protection laws. Mr von Hausswolff visited Poland in 1989 to exhibit his art at a gallery not far from Lublin, a town near Majdanek. He says he was ‘gathering material for the exhibition’ when he visited the concentration camp. ‘I gathered some ashes from one of the cremation ovens, but did not use it for the exhibition – the material was too charged with the cruelties which had taken place.’ Not until 2010 did the artist decide to ‘do something’ with the ashes he had stolen from Majdanek and used it as paint by mixing it with water. The exhibited result has enraged art critics and provoked public outcry over the use of human remains as art. Author and translator Salomon Schulman called the artwork ‘nauseating, obsessed necrophilia’. With what he calls ‘posthumous disgust’, Mr Schulman asks: ‘Some of the ashes may be from one of my relatives? Maybe even a brother of my flesh?’ ‘It is repulsive beyond the extreme’, he told Swedish television. Read more here.

    Fury over artist who claims he used ash from Nazi concentration camp crematorium in his painting

    A Swedish artist has caused outrage after exhibiting artwork which he claims to have painted using ashes gathered in the crematorium of a Nazi concentration camp.

    Carl Michael von Hausswolff stole the ashes from Majdanek concentration camp in Poland during a 1989 trip and over two decades later, mixed it with water and used it as paint.

    He has now been reported to the police for desecrating the remains of Majdanek’s Holocaust victims, under Swedish burial protection laws.

    Mr von Hausswolff visited Poland in 1989 to exhibit his art at a gallery not far from Lublin, a town near Majdanek. He says he was ‘gathering material for the exhibition’ when he visited the concentration camp.

    ‘I gathered some ashes from one of the cremation ovens, but did not use it for the exhibition – the material was too charged with the cruelties which had taken place.’

    Not until 2010 did the artist decide to ‘do something’ with the ashes he had stolen from Majdanek and used it as paint by mixing it with water.

    The exhibited result has enraged art critics and provoked public outcry over the use of human remains as art.

    Author and translator Salomon Schulman called the artwork ‘nauseating, obsessed necrophilia’.

    With what he calls ‘posthumous disgust’, Mr Schulman asks: ‘Some of the ashes may be from one of my relatives? Maybe even a brother of my flesh?’

    ‘It is repulsive beyond the extreme’, he told Swedish television.

    Read more here.

    Archaeologists begin dig of possible Second World War mass grave

    Archaeologists have begun excavating a possible mass grave after almost 400 died in the sinking of a Second World War vessel.

    HMS Dasher exploded and sank off the coast of Arran on March 27, 1943, in one of the worst non-conflict maritime disasters in UK history.

    The converted aircraft carrier made in the US claimed the lives of 379 personnel, only 24 of whom have been given recorded burials.

    Guard Archaeology has begun digging part of Ardrossan Cemetery where local campaigner John Steele believes some of the dead were buried.

    Details of the disaster were kept secret by the Royal Navy for several years, while bodies of the crew who died in the explosion continued to wash up on beaches in Ayrshire for weeks afterwards.

    The search of the site comes after Mr Steele has researched the sinking of HMS Dasher for the past decade.

    Glasgow University’s Archaeology Department previously used radar technology on the site and found that it could not be ruled out that there were “numerous bodies” without coffins buried in a deep pit.

    At the time of the disaster a media blackout was enforced before it was briefly mentioned in an article in The Times in 1945.

    New dig launched in Poland for victims of communist terror

    archaeologicalnews:

    A mass grave has been located which historians believe may be the resting place of members of the National Armed Forces (NSZ), one of the chief Polish resistance groups to stay active following the end of the Second World War.

    Victims appear to have been shot in the back of the head, a…

    Dignity at last for the German soldiers killed in desperate battle against the Russians and never given a proper burial The remains of a German soldier killed during the Second World War have been unearthed during an excavation by volunteers dedicated to giving dignified burials to the war dead. Bones and personal belongings were dug up during the excavation near the eastern German town of Klessin, which lies about 50 miles east of Berlin. The area around the small town which lies close to the Polish border was the place of a battle between German and Soviet forces between February and March 1945 - part of the final push into Germany known as the Battle of Berlin. As many as 200 of the soldiers who were part of the conflict are still missing today - instigating the dig. The excavation was carried out by members of The Association for the Recovery of the Fallen in Eastern Europe who have been carrying out digs to help identify those killed in both the First and Second World Wars. Known in Germany as Vereins zur Bergung Gefallener in Osteuropa or VBGO, the group is made up entirely of volunteers, many of whom are from Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine and the US. Since they were founded in 1992 the group has recovered more than 7,000 sets of remains all over Europe. But due to the level of decomposition they are only able to identify around 25 per cent of those discovered. Full story here.

    Dignity at last for the German soldiers killed in desperate battle against the Russians and never given a proper burial

    The remains of a German soldier killed during the Second World War have been unearthed during an excavation by volunteers dedicated to giving dignified burials to the war dead.

    Bones and personal belongings were dug up during the excavation near the eastern German town of Klessin, which lies about 50 miles east of Berlin.

    The area around the small town which lies close to the Polish border was the place of a battle between German and Soviet forces between February and March 1945 - part of the final push into Germany known as the Battle of Berlin.

    As many as 200 of the soldiers who were part of the conflict are still missing today - instigating the dig.

    The excavation was carried out by members of The Association for the Recovery of the Fallen in Eastern Europe who have been carrying out digs to help identify those killed in both the First and Second World Wars.

    Known in Germany as Vereins zur Bergung Gefallener in Osteuropa or VBGO, the group is made up entirely of volunteers, many of whom are from Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine and the US.

    Since they were founded in 1992 the group has recovered more than 7,000 sets of remains all over Europe.

    But due to the level of decomposition they are only able to identify around 25 per cent of those discovered.

    Full story here.

    Proudly Bearing Elders’ Scars, Their Skin Says ‘Never Forget’ JERUSALEM — When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it. Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit. “All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust,” said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. “You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.” Mr. Diamant’s descendants are among a handful of children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors here who have taken the step of memorializing the darkest days of history on their own bodies. With the number of survivors here dropping to about 200,000 from 400,000 a decade ago, institutions and individuals are grappling with how best to remember the Holocaust — so integral toIsrael’s founding and identity — after those who lived it are gone. Rite-of-passage trips to the death camps, like the one Ms. Sagir took, are now standard for high school students. The Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and other museums are trying to make exhibits more accessible, using individual stories and special effects. Arguments rage about whether that approach trivializes symbols long held as sacred and whether the primary message should be about the importance of a self-reliant Jewish state in preventing a future genocide or a more universal one about racism and tolerance. Full story here.

    Proudly Bearing Elders’ Scars, Their Skin Says ‘Never Forget’

    JERUSALEM — When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it.

    Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit.

    “All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust,” said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. “You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.”

    Mr. Diamant’s descendants are among a handful of children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors here who have taken the step of memorializing the darkest days of history on their own bodies. With the number of survivors here dropping to about 200,000 from 400,000 a decade ago, institutions and individuals are grappling with how best to remember the Holocaust — so integral toIsrael’s founding and identity — after those who lived it are gone.

    Rite-of-passage trips to the death camps, like the one Ms. Sagir took, are now standard for high school students. The Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and other museums are trying to make exhibits more accessible, using individual stories and special effects. Arguments rage about whether that approach trivializes symbols long held as sacred and whether the primary message should be about the importance of a self-reliant Jewish state in preventing a future genocide or a more universal one about racism and tolerance.

    Full story here.