Yad Vashem, Israel’s largest Holocaust memorial is set on the slopes of the Mount of Remembrance on the edge of Jerusalem. The new Yad Vashem Museum opened in 2005 and its nine chilling galleries of interactive historical displays present the Holocaust using a range of multimedia including photographs, films, documents, letters, works of art, and personal items found in the camps and ghettos. The Hall of Names containing Pages of Testimony commemorating the millions of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust

credit: Michael Panse

More than 200,000 people were imprisoned here by the Nazis and some 50,000 were brutally murdered. Sachsenhausen was initially used to imprison political opponents. Later, the camp became a training ground for the SS and the site of the headquarters of the whole concentration camp system. After the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as a camp for their own political enemies. The Soviet Special Camp was called No. 7/No. 1. From 1945 to 1950, 60,000 people were imprisoned in these barracks by the Soviet Secret Service; around 12,000 of them died of hunger and sickness.

credit: János Balázs