On Monday, July 8, 2024, Yad vashem will inaugurate the new Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus with the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center at its center.
The opening ceremony will be attended by President of Israel Isaac Herzog, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, and Yad Vashem President Dani Dayan. Representatives of the Moshal and Shapell families, as well as many other donors and dignitaries, will also attend. This historic event marks an important milestone in the preservation and commemoration of Holocaust history.
President Dani Dayan declared that “the inauguration of the Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center It is a monumental achievement in our continuing mission to preserve the history and legacy of the Holocaust. This facility ensures that future generations will have access to the personal stories and historical documents that are vital to understanding and remembering the atrocities of the past. “We are deeply grateful to the Moshal and Shapell families, and all of our supporters, for their unwavering commitment to this cause.”
The night before, Sunday, July 7, 2024, Yad Vashem will host a commemorative concert at the Jerusalem Theater to mark the inauguration of the new Campus and Collections Center. This event will feature performances by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Neve Shir Women's Choir and Violins of Hope.
Additionally, there will be a special performance by IDF reservist Mordechai Shenvald, who was wounded in November 2023 in Gaza during Operation Iron Sword. Mordechai, whose grandfather was liberated from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp in January 1945, will perform using a violin that belonged to Motele Schlein, a 12-year-old Jewish partisan who fought in the forests against the German Nazis.
Motele witnessed the murder of his family while hiding in an attic. Grabbing the violin from him, he fled into the forest where he joined the partisans. When German soldiers ambushed his unit, Motele rushed to warn the fighters.
Motele, unfortunately, was injured by a gunshot. With his last breath he asked: “Will I be able to see my parents and my sister now?”.
His violin was saved by a fellow partisan and donated to Yad Vashem, with the request that it continue to be played for future generations, proof that the Nazis failed to silence the moving melodies of Motele's violin. Motele's history and violin have found their eternal home as part of Yad Vashem's vast Artifact Collection and are on permanent display at the Holocaust History Museum.