"This is what it's like when we light the Hanukkah candles at the orphanage. Will it stay the same-" These words were written on the back of a 77-year-old postcard recently given to Yad Vashem as part of a special preservation project. The postcard was sent out by Frankfurt Jewish Orphanage in 1937 to Jewish communities worldwide in hope of raising donations. The photograph on the front of the card shows children in the orphanage lighting candles, observing the Jewish holiday even after the Nazis rose to power. One of the children in the picture was Max Zellman, who arrived at the orphanage with his sister in 1931. In 1939, the Zellman siblings were moved to France, where they were hidden by the Jewish rescue organization Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children's Aid Society.) In 1944, they were smuggled into Spain, and from there they immigrated to British Mandate Palestine. Max, who changed his name to Mordechai Yaron, donated the postcard to Yad Vashem. Now 86, he told Israel Hayom: "Today, some [Israeli] young people are going to live in Berlin and they have no idea what happened near Berlin in the time of the Holocaust. Preservation is very important." Yad Vashem Archives Director Dr. Haim Gertner said: "In many homes in Israel, there are still documents, photographs and objects related to the life, the culture, the religion, and educational and welfare activity, as the Holocaust approached." Gertner called on anyone who has personal items from the Holocaust period to give them to Yad Vashem to be preserved as part of the museum's Gathering the Fragments campaign, a national project to protect the materials and make them accessible to the wider public.
