today (27 Jan) is International Holocaust Memorial Day, so I've compiled a list of charities you can donate to which help to preserve European Jewish culture as well as supporting living Jewish communities, especially in Eastern Europe, as a way to honour victims of the Holocaust both by preserving their memory and by supporting the European Jewish communities that the Nazis aimed to destroy.
- YIVO; founded in Vilne, Lithuania in 1925 and now based in New York, is one of the largest organisations for the preservation and education of Yiddish, as well as hosting the largest archive of Eastern European Jewish materials (23 million items) - including many which were rescued from Nazi book-burning by Jewish resistance. It is the ONLY prewar Jewish library and archive to have survived the Holocaust.
- World Jewish Relief, formed during the Holocaust by the UK Jewish community to aid the evacuation of German Jews. The majority of their modern day work focuses on aiding vulnerable Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. They also provide aid to refugees, disabled and elderly people, and respond to international disasters across the world.
- The Yiddish Book Centre hosts an online archive of hundreds of digitised Yiddish books (many with translations), as well as a video oral history archive with 1000+ Jewish people of all ages and backgrounds telling their own stories, many in Yiddish (with subtitles). They also train new Yiddish translators and run lectures, education programs, film screenings, music festivals, and the world's first Yiddish museum.
- The Together Plan supports post-Soviet Jewish communities, especially in Belarus due to the current instability there. As well as supporting Jewish communities with aid, education, and community building; they also record and translate Holocaust testimonies, preserve Jewish graveyards, and run education on Jewish Belarus.
- The European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative works to preserve and restore Jewish cemeteries, particularly in countries whose Jewish populations were decimated by the Holocaust, which left cemeteries to be vandalised and fall into decay. This is an important act in honouring the dignity of the dead, as well as witnessing and preserving the presence of lost European Jewish life.
If you have no money to spare, consider spending some time browsing the testimony and history hosted on YIVO and the Yiddish Book Centre as an act of memorial.
