Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more

Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more
Exterior of The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center on the he Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP)
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Updated 09 July 2024
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Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more

Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more
  • Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles

JERUSALEM: Israel’s national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem on Monday that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, serves as both a museum and a research institution. It welcomes nearly a million visitors each year, leads the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day and hosts nearly all foreign dignitaries visiting Israel.
“Before we opened this building, it was very difficult to exhibit our treasures that were kept in our vaults. They were kind of secret,” said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. “Now there’s a state-of-the-art installation (that) will help us to exhibit them.”
The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, will also provide organization and storage for the museum’s 225 million pages of documents and half a million photographs.
Dayan said the materials will now be kept in a facility that preserves them in optimal temperatures and conditions.
“Yad Vashem has the largest collections in the world of materials related to the Holocaust,” Dayan said. “We will make sure that these treasures are kept for eternity.”
The new facility includes advanced, high-tech labs for conservation, enabling experts to revisit some of the museum’s trickier items, such as a film canister that a family who fled Austria in 1939 brought with them. It was donated to the museum but arrived in an advanced state of decay.
“The film arrived in the worst state it could. It smelled really bad,” said Reut Ilan-Shafik, a photography conservator at Yad Vashem. Over the years, the film had congealed into a solid piece of plastic, making it impossible to be scanned.
Using organic solvents, conservators were able to restore some of the film’s flexibility, allowing them to carefully unravel pieces of it. Using a microscope, Ilan-Shafik was able to see a few frames in their entirety, including one showing a couple kissing on a bench in a park and other snapshots of Europe before World War II.
“It is unbelievable to know that the images of the film that we otherwise thought lost to time” have been recovered, said Orit Feldberg, granddaughter of Hans and Klara Lebel, the couple featured in the film reel.
Feldberg’s mother donated the film canister, one of the few things the Lebels were able to take with them when they fled Austria.
“These photographs not only tell their unique story but also keep their memory vibrantly alive,” Feldberg said.
Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles.
Last month, the Auschwitz Memorial announced it had finished a half-million-dollar project to conserve 3,000 of the 8,000 pairs of children’s shoes that are on display at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.


Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak resigns

Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak resigns
Updated 23 sec ago
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Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak resigns

Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak resigns

Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the prime minister of Yemen's internationally recognized government, said on Saturday he had submitted his resignation.
In a statement, Mubarak said he had faced "lots of difficulties", including being unable to reshuffle the government.


MSF says its hospital bombed in South Sudan

Updated 1 min 9 sec ago
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MSF says its hospital bombed in South Sudan

MSF says its hospital bombed in South Sudan
“The pharmacy was destroyed. All medical supplies lost,” MSF said

JUBA: Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said one of its hospitals in South Sudan had been bombed early on Saturday, leading to the loss of all its medical supplies.
“At 4 am today, MSF’s hospital in Old Fangak, South Sudan, was bombed. The pharmacy was destroyed. All medical supplies lost. There are reports of people killed and injured,” the medical charity said in a statement.

UN chief condemns Israeli strikes on Syria

UN chief condemns Israeli strikes on Syria
Updated 03 May 2025
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UN chief condemns Israeli strikes on Syria

UN chief condemns Israeli strikes on Syria
  • Antonio Guterres ‘alarmed’ over reports of sectarian violence around Damascus, Suwayda
  • UN commission ‘deeply troubled’ after more than 100 people were killed in clashes this week

NEW YORK CITY: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned repeated Israeli airstrikes on Syria as well as growing sectarian violence around Damascus and Suwayda.

The condemnation came after more than 100 people were killed in clashes in the Syrian Arab Republic over the past week.

The violence has taken place in two predominantly Druze suburbs of the capital, Jaramana and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, as well as in the southern Druze stronghold of Suwayda.

Guterres “has been monitoring with alarm the reports of violence in the suburbs of Damascus and in the south of Syria, including reports of civilian casualties and assassination of local administration figures,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

The secretary-general condemned “all violence against civilians” and acts that “could risk inflaming sectarian tensions.”

Amid the sectarian clashes, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Syrian targets, in what it described as an attempt to protect the country’s Druze minority.

Early on Friday, it bombed an area near the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Later that day, it targeted the Damascus, Hama and Daraa countryside, killing one civilian in the former and injuring four people in Hama, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Israel acknowledged the strikes, which it claimed targeted “a military site, anti-aircraft cannons and surface-to-air missile infrastructure.”

It followed a warning by Tel Aviv earlier this week that it would attack sites controlled by Syria’s new government if further sectarian clashes involving the Druze minority did not stop.

Guterres condemned Israel’s violation of Syria’s sovereignty and said it was “essential” that the attacks stop. He called on all parties to “cease all hostilities, exercise utmost restraint and avoid further escalation.”

Syria’s interim authorities under the government of President Ahmad Al-Sharaa must “transparently and openly” investigate all violations of peace in a bid to uphold their commitment to “dialogue and cooperation within the framework of national unity,” Guterres added.

On Friday, experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council on the Commission of Inquiry on Syria described the surge in sectarian violence as “deeply troubling.”

The commission was established in 2011, and its three commissioners serve in an independent capacity.

“The spread of discriminatory incitement and hate speech, including through social media, is fueling violence and risks threating Syria’s fragile social cohesion,” the commission said on Friday. “While the situation remains fluid and an agreement has reportedly been reached between prominent leaders in Suwayda and the authorities in Damascus, the commission underscores that the interim government remains responsible for ensuring the protection of all civilians in areas under its control. Impunity for grave violations has in the past been a consistent driver of Syria’s conflict and must not be allowed to persist.”

The commission also highlighted the risk posed by Israeli airstrikes, as well as Tel Aviv’s continued expansion of its occupation in the Golan Heights.

Israel’s attempts to “divide various Syrian communities risks further destabilizing Syria,” it said.

“Syria’s recent history should serve as a reminder that external interventions have often led to increased violence, displacement and fragmentation.”


Sudan paramilitary drone strike hits border city near Eritrea: govt source

Sudan paramilitary drone strike hits border city near Eritrea: govt source
Updated 03 May 2025
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Sudan paramilitary drone strike hits border city near Eritrea: govt source

Sudan paramilitary drone strike hits border city near Eritrea: govt source

KHARTOUM: Sudanese paramilitaries have carried out a rare drone strike on the eastern city of Kassala, near the Eritrean border, a source from the rival army-aligned government said Saturday.
“A drone targeted the fuel storage area at Kassala airport,” the government source told AFP, blaming it on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and reporting no casualties or damage.


Gaza rescuers say three babies among 11 killed in Israel strike

Gaza rescuers say three babies among 11 killed in Israel strike
Updated 03 May 2025
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Gaza rescuers say three babies among 11 killed in Israel strike

Gaza rescuers say three babies among 11 killed in Israel strike
  • An overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people
  • Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people including three babies up to a year old.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal reported 11 killed “after the bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in the Khan Yunis camp” in southern Gaza at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT).
Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one-year-olds, and a month-old baby.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas that was triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack.
On Friday the civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people across the war-ravaged territory, which has been under a total Israeli blockade since March 2.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza, saying Hamas had diverted supplies. Israel says the blockade is meant to pressure the militants into releasing hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have urged Israel to lift restrictions, saying that Gazans were experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe and warning of famine.