“Weddings During the Holocaust” is one of 70 ongoing online exhibits depicting the Holocaust that was conceived, organized and produced by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Israel’s largest Holocaust memorial and museum. Intentionally debuting on Feb. 14, 2024, it is the only retrospective illustrating couples who married during World War II, at a time when millions of Jews were killed at the hands of the German Nazis and their allies.
Natalie Mandelbaum oversaw the photographic project, her first since taking on the role of online exhibitions coordinator in the museum division last August. The weddings exhibit was six months in the making and the result of a collaborative effort between researchers, digital image organizers, and graphic designers.
“We wanted to ask the question: ‘What made people get married in those horrible years,’” said Ms. Mandelbaum, who began working at Yad Vashem in 2014 as a photography researcher in the museum division.
“The men and women who got married during the Holocaust were so brave and had such a complicated life — not a lot of people know these stories,” she said over Zoom from her home in Jerusalem. “The goal was to make them accessible to the world.”
The exhibition highlights 11 couples, with 40-plus photos that explore their weddings across various landscapes and events during three specific times: Weddings under restrictive law, depicting the first days of the occupation and deportations while Jews were still in their homes; weddings in ghettos and camps, highlighting Jews who fell in love and wedded in the concentration and labor camps; and weddings after liberation, when Jews were determined to rebuild their lives and their families post-Holocaust.
