Pope Leo XIV meets head of Israel’s Holocaust memorial center

ROME (OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV met with the head of Israel’s Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center at the Vatican March 23.

The Holy See did not release any details about the meeting, but Yad Vashem issued a statement describing the audience as focused on Holocaust remembrance and research, as well as the rise of antisemitism.

“The meeting was warm and highly constructive. His Holiness underscored the importance he places on preserving the memory of the Holocaust and reaffirmed his commitment to advancing our shared goals,” Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, said after his meeting with the pope.

“We also addressed the alarming rise in antisemitism worldwide and the urgent need for coordinated, decisive action to confront it.”

During the meeting, Dayan highlighted the significance of Vatican archival records for Holocaust research, emphasizing their potential to expand knowledge about Jewish victims and survivors.

He said that they also discussed areas of potential collaboration between the Vatican and the Jerusalem-based institution on Holocaust commemoration, documentation and education.

Dayan, an Argentine-born Israeli diplomat and entrepreneur who has led Yad Vashem since 2021, presented the pope with a reproduction of the artwork “Where Art Thou?” by Carol Deutsch, a Jewish painter killed in the Holocaust. Deutsch created the piece in 1941 in Antwerp as part of a series of 99 works depicting biblical stories and figures, made for his young daughter.

At the close of the meeting, Dayan invited the pope to visit Yad Vashem, located on the Mount of Remembrance on the western slope of Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Pope Leo’s three immediate predecessors all visited the memorial, most recently Pope Francis in 2014.

Yad Vashem, established by the Israeli parliament in 1953, serves as Israel’s official memorial institution to the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and houses one of the world’s most extensive archives of Holocaust documentation.

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