CONFRONTING THE JEWISH RESPONSE DURING THE HOLOCAUST:YAD VASHEM-- A COMMEMORATIVE AND A RESEARCH INSTITUTE IN THE 1950S

Abstract

The Remembrance Memorial Authority, Yad Vashem, officially began to function in Jerusalem in December 1953. Five months earlier the Knesset had passed special legislation that mandated its activities.1 In its early years and throughout the 1950s, the national commemorative authority dealt with the organization of its various departments and the development of its policy. These were the years of finding their way, of attempting to delineate the form of the national memorial in compliance with the Yad Vashem Law. Implementing the provisions of the law meant confronting questions of principle, and, not unexpectedly, significantly different points of view appeared among the prominent figures who were trying to shape the commemorative foundation in its early years. Conflicting ideologies concerning the institution’s mission were expressed in meetings of the directorate as well as in the conferences of the World Council of Yad Vashem, the highest communal body of the memorial foundation. The focal point of these differences was the possible contradiction between the two goals set for Yad Vashem by the legislature. Was it feasible for an institution to fulfill a national objective of commemoration and at the same time to serve as an independent Holocaust research center, disinterested and based on scientific principles? This basic issue arose throughout the fifties in discussions inside the halls of the institution and among the well-known personalities and organizations concerned with the operation of Yad Vashem. In 1960 international jurist Jacob Robinson prepared a special report for the Conference on Material Claims against Germany. Robinson, who was in touch with the directorate of Yad Vashem and had closely followed its operations in the fifties, noted a serious claim that the operational difficulties of Yad Vashem resulted from its commitment to contradictory aims: “the institution apparently fulfilled both the role of a research center and the preserver of the national memo-