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Holocaust ‘Book of Names’ to be inaugurated at the UN underscores the individual identities of the 6 million
When Yad Vashem was created in 1953 on the slopes of Jerusalem’s Mount of Remembrance to commemorate the Holocaust, its founders understood that one of the central functions of the institution would be to document the names of the 6 million Jewish victims.
It was seen as a moral imperative: to demonstrate that behind the almost inconceivable number were real individuals whose lives were cut short by the Nazis.
Now, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, Yad Vashem is inaugurating its Book of Names — a monumental installation containing the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah — at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Among those participating in the Book of Names opening ceremony on Jan. 26 will be U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and Yad Vashem’s chairman, Dani Dayan, a former consul general of Israel in New York.
“The Shoah was the murder of 6 million individual Jews. Each one who died deserves to be remembered as an individual, and not only as part of a nameless collective,” Dayan said.
The Book of Names will be on display at the United Nations for a month. Afterward it will be transferred to its permanent location at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, where it will be open to public viewing in time for Yom HaShoah, the Israeli and Jewish Holocaust remembrance day, in April.
The installation is an updated version of the Yad Vashem Book of Names that has been on permanent display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland since 2017. The new version, which contains 500,000 additional names, stands 6.5 feet high and approximately 3.3 feet wide. Its total length is 26.5 feet. The massive volume lists the names of the victims in alphabetical order and, where the information is known, includes their birth dates, hometowns and places of death. The book has blank pages at the end symbolizing the approximately 1 million victims whose names are not yet recorded.
The names in the Book are sourced from Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names.
“We have been collecting the names of the individual Holocaust victims since 1954, mainly through Pages of Testimony,” said Alexander Avram, director of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names and the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. The Pages of Testimony are one-page forms that survivors and remaining family and friends complete with the names and biographical information of the victims.
“Starting about 20 years ago, we have been able to go beyond these pages and look to thousands of other sources for names,” Avram continues. “These include lists of victims produced by federal archives or organizations in different countries, deportation lists compiled by researchers and museums, and names gathered by memorial sites and institutions. We have also sourced hundreds of thousands of names from our own collections.”
The special team that finds the names and archives them in Yad Vashem’s names database is challenged by the fact that the Nazis either tried to eliminate traces of their crimes against humanity by destroying records, or never registered Jews’ names in the first place — especially in Eastern Europe.
“Few ghettos had censuses or name registrations,” noted Avram. “Hungarian transport lists had numbers, but not names — and they were all taken to extermination sites. Similarly, there were only numerical reports of the Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen [the mobile paramilitary killing squads organized by the Nazis]. At Auschwitz, 900,000, men, women and children were sent straight to their deaths. Only the names of those sent to slave labor there were registered on cards, and the Nazis destroyed most of these records.”
The Book of Names is one component of Yad Vashem’s new strategic plan to improve and increase Holocaust remembrance in Israel and the world at a time when the number of survivors is dwindling and Holocaust denial and antisemitism are on the rise, Dayan said.
The names in the book are sourced from Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, which the institution has been collecting since 1954. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem)
In addition to the permanent installations at Auschwitz and Yad Vashem, there are plans for a third version of the book to be created as a traveling exhibition.
“Our mission will be much more challenging, but also much more important and vital,” Dayan said of the coming era when no survivors remain. “We have to find innovative ways to reflect on and educate about what happened. I believe that you cannot remain indifferent to such a huge display when you see it.”
Dayan said he first experienced the power of the installation when he traveled to Auschwitz to see its initial version and found the names of his father’s uncles who were murdered in Poland.
New Yorker Bronia Brandman, a child survivor of Auschwitz originally from Jaworzno, Poland, was similarly moved when she embarked on a “roots trip” with her grandson Sruli Klaristenfeld in April 2017. Brandman’s large immediate and extended families were almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis.
Klaristenfeld navigated through the massive Book of Names at Auschwitz-Birkenau and found the names of his grandmother’s parents and other relatives. “It was a physical and permanent manifestation of their memory,” Klaristenfeld said.
Brandman said the impact of the monumental installation cannot be underestimated.
“People are indifferent. Many have no concept of the Holocaust ever happening and how it could be that 6 million innocent people were murdered in cold blood, including 1.5 million children,” she said. “The importance of the Book of Names is that the victims are immortalized for the future, and the past is never forgotten.”
Dayan said he looks forward to the Book of Names’ arrival at Yad Vashem after its display at the United Nations.
“Yad Vashem is the natural permanent home for the Book of Names,” Dayan said. “The public will be able to come and browse and find relatives, people with the same name as theirs or from the same locations as their families — or even to just pay respect to the victims.”
Avram said he expects the pages of the new book to be as worn from touch by visitors seeking the names of their family members as are the pages of the Book of Names exhibited at Auschwitz.
“Many families need a tangible, tactile way to reunite with the memory of the victims,” he said. “It’s the closest we can get to providing a gravestone.”
Meanwhile, the work of recovering the unknown victims’ names will continue apace, as it has for the last seven decades.
“It’s a debt we have toward the victims,” Dayan said. “We cannot let them be consigned to the lost pages of history. That is our promise to them — and to future generations.”
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Mother of Last Gaza Hostage Says Israel Won’t Heal Until He’s Back
Talik Gvili, the mother of Ran Gvili, the last hostage remaining in Gaza following the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, looks on during an interview with Reuters at her home in Meitar, Israel, Dec. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The mother of the last hostage in Gaza says Israel will not heal until he or his remains are brought home, and that the next phase of a peace plan should not proceed until he is back.
Police officer Ran Gvili was one of 251 hostages seized and taken to Gaza by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli authorities say they believe he is dead, but his body has not been recovered and his family is clinging to the faint hope that he is still alive.
“We’re at the last stretch and we have to be strong, for Rani, for us, and for Israel. Without Rani, our country can’t heal,” his mother, Talik Gvili, told Reuters.
‘WE WANT TO FEEL HIM’
Posters of Ran Gvili, known by family and friends as Rani, line the streets of Meitar, his hometown in southern Israel.
When Hamas attacked, he was recovering at home from a broken collarbone. He quickly put on his uniform and joined the fight against the Hamas gunmen around Kibbutz Alumim near Gaza.
Gvili, who was 24 at the time, was badly wounded and Israeli authorities said he did not survive for long after being taken to Gaza, his mother said.
“We want to feel him, we want to feel some tiny doubt [that he died],” his mother said, before adding: “It might just be wishful thinking.”
SEARCH FOR GVILI IN GAZA
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October, under which violence has subsided but not entirely stopped in Gaza after two years of war precipitated by the terrorist group’s attack.
The US-backed ceasefire deal included a commitment by Hamas to release all remaining hostages in exchange for about 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners held in Israel, and the bodies of 360 deceased Palestinians.
At the time of the deal, 48 hostages remained in Gaza, 28 of them believed dead. Only Gvili is now still in Gaza.
Once all hostages are returned, the ceasefire agreement is meant to move on to its next phase, tackling issues such as the future governance and rebuilding of Gaza, although each side has accused the other of violating the truce agreement.
But with much of Gaza left in ruins by the offensive which Israel launched in response to the Hamas attack, finding Gvili’s remains is taking time.
Asked about the possibility that Israel might proceed with talks on Gaza before he is returned, his mother said: “No way. We won’t let that happen.”
‘WE’RE NOT ALONE’
The hostages’ plight gave birth to a grassroots movement dedicated to their return. Posters showing their faces were placed on highways, bus stops, skyscrapers, shops, and homes across Israel, and people gathered weekly at the Tel Aviv plaza that became known as Hostages Square to demand their return.
“We’re not alone,” Talik Gvili said, adding that she felt support and solidarity from across the political spectrum.
She describes her son as a strong and kind-hearted person who would look out for those weaker than him.
“We’re happy everyone has returned, except for Rani, we have become one big family so every hostage who returned brought relief, closure. But somebody had to be last, and it looks like that was our fate,” she said.
“But that was his thing, to make sure everyone else was okay first.”
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Syria Marks One Year Since Assad Was Toppled
People gather during a protest to mark the first anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s fall, in Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Hassano
Syrians marked the first anniversary of the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and his iron-fisted rule on Monday with jubilant celebrations in major cities, as the fractured nation struggles to find stability and recover after years of war.
The new leader, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, told a large crowd of supporters that his government had “laid out a clear vision for a new Syria as a state that looks towards a promising future,” calling it a historic break from a “dark chapter.”
Assad fled Syria for Russia a year ago as Sharaa’s rebels seized Damascus following an eight-day blitz through the country, ending his rule more than 13 years after an uprising had spiraled into bitter civil war.
‘WE STARTED LOVING THE COUNTRY,’ SAYS ALEPPO RESIDENT
Sharaa began Monday with dawn prayers at Damascus’ Umayyad Mosque, dressed in the military fatigues he wore as head of the former al-Qaeda rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a uniform he has since switched for the sombre suits of presidential office.
He promised to build a just and strong Syria, state news agency SANA reported.
“From north to south and from east to west, God willing, we will rebuild a strong Syria with a structure befitting its present and past,” he said.
In Aleppo, the first major city to fall to Sharaa’s forces last year, cars paraded through the streets honking their horns, with passengers waving Syria‘s new flag.
“We started loving the country. We didn’t love the country before, we used to try to escape from it,” said Mohammed Karam Hammami, an Aleppo resident.
Sharaa has ushered in big changes which have reshaped Syria‘s foreign ties. He has forged relations with the US, won support from Gulf Arab states and Turkey, and turned away from Assad‘s backers Iran and Russia. Crippling Western sanctions have largely been lifted.
He has promised to replace Assad‘s brutal police state with an inclusive and just order.
However, hundreds of people have been killed in bouts of sectarian violence, causing new displacements and fueling mistrust among minorities towards Sharaa’s government, as he struggles to bring all Syria back under Damascus’ authority.
The Kurdish-led administration that runs the northeast banned gatherings or events on security grounds, citing increased activity by “terror cells” seeking to exploit the occasion. It congratulated Syrians on the anniversary.
The Kurdish-led administration has sought to safeguard its regional autonomy, while in the south, some Druze – followers of a minority sect that is an offshoot of Islam – have been demanding independence in the southern province of Sweida since hundreds of people were killed there in deadly clashes in July with government forces.
FOUR MORE YEARS OF TRANSITION BEFORE ELECTIONS
Sharaa told a forum in Qatar over the weekend that “Syria today is living its best times,” despite the bouts of violence, and said those responsible would be held accountable.
He said a transitional period led by him would continue for four more years, to set up institutions, laws, and a new constitution – to be put to a public vote – at which point the country would hold elections.
Sharaa wields broad powers under a temporary constitution approved in March. The authorities organized an indirect vote in October to form a parliament, but Sharaa has yet to select one third of the 210 members as per the constitution.
The Assad family, members of Syria‘s Alawite minority community, ruled Syria for 54 years.
The Syrian war killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more since 2011, driving some five million into neighbouring countries as refugees.
The UN refugee agency said on Monday that some 1.2 million refugees, in addition to 1.9 million internally displaced people, had gone home since Assad was toppled, but a decline in global funding could deter others.
Syria‘s central bank governor, speaking at a Reuters NEXT conference last week, said the return of some 1.5 million refugees was helping the economy grow.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says humanitarian needs across Syria are acute, with some 16.5 million people needing aid in 2025.
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Fatah and Palestinian Authority Celebrate Terrorist Mass Murderers on School Books
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Nov. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
As part of its “national and moral responsibility towards its student members,” the student movement of Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party distributed free notebooks to students at the Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie at the beginning of the academic year.
Seemingly, this was a praiseworthy act.
But whom did Fatah choose to adorn the cover of the notebook? Was it a Palestinian businesswoman, scientist, or artist?
No.
Terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi was the role model chosen to inspire students on the cover. She is, after all, a Palestinian hero according to the Fatah Shabiba Student Movement and the Student Union Council at the university.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented that Dalal Mughrabi — who led the attack that, until Oct. 7, 2023, was the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history — has been turned into a role model for Palestinians by the PA. In the 1978 attack, known as the Coastal Road massacre, Mughrabi and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway, murdering 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70.
Murderer Mughrabi’s picture is also included in a display of drawings of various prominent Palestinian figures at a current exhibition at the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah:
In the front row of figures on the left wearing a keffiyeh (Arab headdress) is terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Directly above Mughrabi is Fatah terror leader Abu Ali Iyad, above him is terrorist Khalil Al-Wazir, “Abu Jihad,” who was responsible for the murder of 125 people. To the left of “Abu Jihad” is Yasser Arafat, and to the left of Arafat is head of the Black September terror organization Salah Khalaf, “Abu Iyad.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Nov. 11, 2025]
Young Palestinian children are also fed a diet of violence and terror promotion.
At the National Book Fair organized by the PA Ministry of Culture at the Arab American University in Jenin, young schoolgirls read books written by terrorist prisoners at a booth in which the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs “presented the literary and intellectual works” of terrorists and released terrorists.
One book cover in the center of the table pictured below features a picture of terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who orchestrated three attacks in which five people were murdered:
[PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Facebook page, Nov. 4, 2025]
The presentation of terrorists as important cultural and “intellectual” figures at schools, universities, museums, and book fairs follows PA policy of celebrating imprisoned and released terrorists who have written books in prison as esteemed writers
Official PA TV glorified released terrorist Osama Al-Ashqar, who was responsible for the murder of eight people, at an event in Cairo [Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Sept. 10, 2025]. Meanwhile, Fatah Movement Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul attended and signed books at the launch ceremony of a book written by released terrorist Raed Abd Al-Jalil, who was involved in the murder of five people:
Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul signs the book “Love and a Rifle” by released terrorist prisoner Raed Abd Al-Jalil. [Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, Facebook page, Nov. 5, 2025]
Al-Aloul also stressed another PA ideology — non-recognition of Israel in any borders — presenting the terrorist murderer’s family with an honorary plaque that features the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel together with the PA areas as “Palestine.”
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.