What we do
Yad Vashem UK Foundation promotes Holocaust education and awareness by sponsoring an annual seminar for UK teachers and informal educators at the International School of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem; we promote Yad Vashem’s educational philosophy through our unique travelling exhibitions, learning resources, and through the use of Yad Vashem educators and public speakers; and we put names to the faceless victims of the Holocaust and remember them through our Guardian of the Memory Campaign and our Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah twinning projects.
What we offer schools
For over a decade, we at Yad Vashem UK have been developing our Bar and Bat Mitzvah Twinning programme.
This initiative links Bar and Bat Mitzvah children with a victim of the Shoah; young people are given an opportunity to link with someone with the same name, or even more poignant a link with someone in their family or where their families may have originated. Children are encouraged to research their twin, using a page of testimony from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and on their special day in Shul, they are presented with a certificate and a unique Yad Vashem pin; but more importantly they become what their twin could never have been.
School years we work with
Year 7 and Year 8
Cost to school
There is no cost to schools, and we are pleased to offer assemblies, or smaller group sessions to explain the project.
Please contact education@yadvashem.org.uk
Once young people sign up there is a suggested donation of £50 to cover research costs.
A Twinning participant says “I have twinned my Bat Mitzvah with a young victim of the Holocaust – Anita Hauser, a young girl from Austria who was tragically murdered aged 8. She shares the same surname as my great great great grandfather”
