Share your simchah with a Shoah twin

YAD VASHEM UK Foundation offers a barmitzvah and batmitzvah twinning programme to enrich your child’s comingof-age experience, by memorialising a victim of the Holocaust who did not have the privilege of such a celebration. Researchers at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem will endeavour to find a name to which your child can relate — perhaps someone with the same name or birthday as the child celebrating, or someone who came from the same town or area where your family originated.

Family members are encouraged to use the Page of Testimony (a Yad Vashem document recording details of the person’s life) to learn as much as they can about the history of the child they are commemorating.

To facilitate this, Yad Vashem sends a study guide, together with the Page of Testimony and a certificate detailing a list of resources, on various websites and in books easily found in most libraries.

Yad Vashem also offers a twinning programme. A private guided tour is given, tailored to fit your specific requirements and taking into account the ages of the children in the family, family history and the interests of the barmitzvah or batmitzvah child.

This tour concludes with a visit to the Hall of Names, where the barmitzvah or batmitzvah celebrant is introduced to the central database of Shoah victims’ names and is given a certificate acknowledging participation in the programme, with the details of the The aim is to keep alive the memory of every Jewish victim, remembering their individual, personal story

Holocaust victim whom they have chosen to commemorate.

Yad Vashem requests that the barmitzvah or batmitzvah celebrant becomes a Guardian of the Memory and lights a candle on Holocaust Memorial Day and/or Yom HaShoah, in memory of their “twin” who died during the Holocaust. Guardian of the Memory aims to ensure every Jewish victim has a memorial candle lit in

their memory on Holocaust Memorial Day and Yom HaShoah.

There were six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, among them 1.5 million Jewish children. These are statistics are barely possible to comprehend. Some of these individuals had no members of their family left to remember them. It is Yad Vashem UK Foundation’s aim to keep alive the memory of every one of these Jewish

victims and to remember each victim as a human being with a name and unique personal story.

yadvashem.org.uk guardianofthememory.org

For more information on the background of victims of the Holocaust, go to db.yadvashem.org/names and share their story with others. Registered charity 1099659