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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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Qatar, Turkey Try to Circumvent Hamas Disarmament as Terror Group Escalates Crackdown in Gaza
Palestinians walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, November 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
As the United States pushes for the second phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire to begin, Israel is warning that Qatar and Turkey are trying to shield Hamas from disarmament as the Palestinian terrorist group seeks to reassert control over the war-torn enclave.
Qatar and Turkey have proposed alternatives to a central provision of Trump’s peace plan, according to Israeli media reports. Rather than requiring Hamas to disarm, Qatari and Turkish officials have pushed for the Islamist group either to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority or place them in secure storage under international oversight.
As part of this plan, Qatar and Turkey are reportedly advocating a two‑year grace period during which Hamas could legally retain its weapons.
However, Israeli officials have rejected these options as unacceptable, arguing they would allow the terrorist group to maintain its influence in Gaza, which Hamas has ruled for nearly two decades.
Israel has made clear it will allow Hamas just a few months to give up its weapons, warning it will act unilaterally if the group is not disarmed promptly.
Turkey and Qatar, both longtime backers of Hamas, have been trying to expand their roles in Gaza’s post-war reconstruction, which experts have warned could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected any Turkish or Qatari involvement in post-war Gaza.
The first stage of Trump’s peace plan, which took effect in October, included Hamas releasing all the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, who were kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. In exchange, Israel released thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including many convicted terrorists serving life sentences, and partially withdrew its military forces in Gaza to a newly drawn “Yellow Line,” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west.
Currently, the Israeli military controls 53 percent of Gaza’s territory, and Hamas has moved to reestablish control over the other 47 percent. However, the vast majority of the Gazan population is located in the Hamas-controlled half, where the Islamist group has been imposing a brutal crackdown.
The second stage of the US plan is supposed to install an interim administrative authority — a so-called “technocratic government” — deploy an International Stabilization Force — a multinational force meant to take over security in Gaza — and begin the demilitarization of Hamas.
As the international community works to implement phase two of the ceasefire deal, Qatar and Turkey are now insisting that Israel must withdraw from Gaza before Hamas can disarm — a demand Jerusalem vehemently opposes, warning it would give the terrorist group time to reassert full control over its half of Gaza and remove any incentive to disarm later on.
On Saturday, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the international community has only achieved a “pause” in fighting, but not a full ceasefire, stressing that Israel would need to withdraw from the entire enclave to make it possible.
“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces, there is stability back in Gaza [and] people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” Al Thani said during a press conference.
The Qatari leader also said that the mediating countries, including Turkey, Egypt, and the US, are “getting together in order to force the way forward for the next phase.”
However, Al Thani emphasized Qatar considers phase two to be “temporary,” arguing that addressing the immediate situation in Gaza alone is insufficient without tackling what he described as the underlying causes of the conflict.
“This conflict is not only about Gaza, but also the West Bank. It’s about the rights of the Palestinians for their state,” he said. “We are hoping that we can work together with the US administration to achieve this vision.”
According to the ceasefire plan, the Israeli army is required to withdraw further as the disarmament process unfolds. However, Israel has made clear that it will not pull back until Hamas disarms and other conditions are met.
“We will not allow Hamas to reestablish itself. We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip, and we will remain on those defense lines,” Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said on Sunday. “The Yellow Line is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said a credible Palestinian civil administration and a vetted, trained police force should be established before Hamas can disarm.
In a press conference, Fidan emphasized that without these conditions, expecting Hamas to disarm is neither “realistic nor doable.”
However, Hamas continues to reject full disarmament, saying the group is only open to storing or freezing its weapons in order to preserve “the Palestinians’ ability to defend themselves.”
“Hamas is willing to discuss these ideas in the context of a ceasefire or long-term truce within a political process that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” senior Hamas official Basem Naim said in a statement.
In Gaza, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has continued to escalate dramatically as the terrorist group moves to reassert control over the enclave and consolidate its weakened position.
Following the death of Yasser Abu Shabab, the leader of an armed anti-Hamas Palestinian faction, last week, Hamas has given militants a 10-day ultimatum to surrender in exchange for promises of amnesty, according to Israel’s Channel 12 and reports on social media.
Abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in Israeli-held Rafah in southern Gaza, had led one of the most prominent of several small anti-Hamas groups that emerged in the enclave during the war that began more than two years ago.
He died last week while mediating an internal dispute between families and groups within the militia, dealing a setback to Israeli efforts to support Gazan clans against the ruling Islamist group.
Since the ceasefire took effect two months ago, Hamas has targeted Palestinians who it labeled as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel,” sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group moves to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
Social media videos widely circulated online show Hamas members brutally beating Palestinians and carrying out public executions of alleged collaborators and rival militia members.
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Ted Cruz Blasts Tucker Carlson for Plan to Buy Home in Qatar, Conduct at Doha Forum
Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The ongoing foreign policy feud between US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and anti-Israel podcaster Tucker Carlson continued over the weekend, with the legislator responding bluntly to the former Fox News host’s conduct and declarations at the Doha Forum in Qatar.
In reply to Carlson’s announcement on Sunday that he intended to purchase a home in Doha and reports of anti-Israel sentiments at the event sponsored by the country’s ruling monarchy, Cruz asked, “I thought fellatio was illegal in Qatar?”
Carlson had a sit-down discussion with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani during the forum, during which the far-right media provocateur referenced widespread speculation that he was receiving Qatari money. Analysts have revealed in recent reports that Qatar, a longtime supporter of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood’s global network more broadly, has spent tens of billions of dollars to influence US policy making and public opinion in Doha’s favor.
“I have been criticized as being a tool of Qatar, and I just want to say – which you already know – which is I have never taken anything from your country and don’t plan to,” Carlson said over the weekend. “I am, however, tomorrow buying a place in Qatar. I like the city; I think it’s beautiful. But also want to make a statement that I’m an American and a free man and I’ll be wherever I want to be. I have not taken any money from Qatar, but I have now given money to Qatar.”
Carlson later confirmed his views of Qatar to the Doha News, saying that “I like it here a lot.” He previously told his fellow far-right podcaster Steve Bannon that “they know I’m not working for Qatar.”
Cruz also responded to an X post by Carlson’s longtime business partner Neil Patel which had tagged him and featured the podcaster extending a middle finger with the text, “Greetings from the booodthirsty, terror-supporting slave state of Qatar.”
The senator affirmed the sarcastic taunt, writing, “Fact check: true.”
Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, also a frequent critic of Carlson who has previously deployed the epithet “Qatarlson,” wrote on Monday that “Neil Patel was top policy adviser to Dick Cheney. Tucker Carlson worked for Bill Kristol. Now they’re both monarchists — Qatar first lapdogs for a terrorist dictatorship.”
The Al Thani family monarchy has run Qatar since the 1800s and has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood. The country has provided the Hamas-run government in Gaza with an estimated $1.8 billion and allows the terrorist group to host an office in Doha.
The US State Department has affirmed severe human rights abuses in Qatar, including “enforced disappearance; arbitrary arrest; political prisoners; serious restrictions on free expression, including the existence of criminal libel laws; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations; restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully in free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; extensive gender-based violence; existence of laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct, which were not systematically enforced; and the prohibition of independent trade unions and significant or systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association.”
US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) defended Carlson from Cruz’s criticism.
“Canadian born Zionist Texas Senator Ted Cruz has lost his mind over Tucker Carlson,” Greene wrote Sunday on X. “You would think a United States Senator would be gravely concerned about affordability for Americans, the looming healthcare crisis, and actually passing appropriations with another government funding deadline coming end of January. But instead he’s gone mad with Tucker living rent free in his head.”
On Monday, Greene shared graphics on X critical of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) support for President Donald Trump, writing, “I AM AMERICA FIRST. Thank you for your attention to this matter. -MTG.” One green image of a smiling, colorful Greene from “TrackAIPAC” affirms $0 in donations. This juxtaposes with a red image of a black and white, scowling Trump who has allegedly received over $230 million.
AIPAC, a prominent American lobbying group, seeks to foster bipartisan support for a strong US-Israel alliance.
In a Sunday interview with “60 Minutes,” Greene defended her decision not to vote for a measure condemning antisemitism, saying, “We don’t have to get on our knees and say it over and over again.”
Mark Dubowitz, CEO at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, reflected on Carlson’s remarks in Doha by recalling the man’s father: “Watching Tucker in Doha, I think of Ambassador Richard W. Carlson — my former @FDD colleague and mentor. A true American patriot. A steadfast friend of Israel and the Jewish people. A fearless opponent of Islamists and Communists. May his memory be a blessing.”
While many observers both within and outside the American political right have expressed concerns about increases in antisemitic sentiment, Vice President JD Vance pushed back on the claim over the weekend.
“I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic,” he said. “Do I think the Republican Party is substantially more antisemitic than it was 10 or 15 years ago? Absolutely not.”
Vance, who employs one of Carlson’s sons in his office and is reportedly friends with the podcaster, added, “I just don’t see the simmering antisemitism that’s exploding that some people claim.”
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French Nanny Faces Trial for Poisoning Jewish Family in Case Stirring Outrage Amid Rising Antisemitic Attacks
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
An Algerian woman residing illegally in France is set to stand trial on Tuesday on antisemitism-aggravated charges after admitting to poisoning the food of the Jewish family that employed her as a nanny, in a case that has intensified public outrage amid a surge of antisemitic attacks across the country.
The 42-year-old nanny, who has worked as a live-in caregiver for a family with three children aged two, five, and seven since November 2023, will now appear at the criminal court in Nanterre, just west of Paris, accused of poisoning them by contaminating their food and drinks with toxic substances, according to French media.
She is expected to face multiple charges, including “administering a harmful substance that caused more than eight days of incapacity for racial or religious reasons.”
The nanny, who has been living in France in violation of a deportation order issued in February 2024, is currently in custody and faces additional charges for presenting her employers with a forged Belgian identity document.
The shocking incident, first reported by Le Parisien, in January last year occurred just two months after the caregiver was hired, when the mother discovered cleaning products in the wine she drank and suffered severe eye pain from using makeup remover that had been contaminated with a toxic substance, prompting her to call the police.
After a series of forensic tests, investigators detected polyethylene glycol — a chemical commonly used in industrial and pharmaceutical products — along with other toxic substances in the food consumed by the family and their three children.
According to court documents, these chemicals were described as “harmful, even corrosive, and capable of causing serious injuries to the digestive tract.”
When the mother explained that only her family and the nanny had access to the house, she was promptly taken into police custody for questioning.
Even though she initially denied the charges against her, the nanny later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”
“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”
According to her lawyer, Solange Marel, the nanny has withdrawn her confession, maintaining that there is no proof of an antisemitic motive and that jealousy and a perceived financial grievance were the primary factors.
She also emphasized that the substances were found only in the parents’ drinks, not the children’s.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — is set to appear before the court on Tuesday as a witness for the family.
He described the case as “revealing of structural violence, whose singular severity should neither be minimized nor concealed.”