Israel's Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more

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Israel's Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more

2024-07-09 10:14 Last Updated At：10:20

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem on Monday that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, serves as both a museum and a research institution. It welcomes nearly a million visitors each year, leads the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day and hosts nearly all foreign dignitaries visiting Israel.

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Martin and Ilana Moshav on the podium at the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks at the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A worker peruses the documents archive at The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Sarah Reichert restores a painting in a conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Exterior of the The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center on the he Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A striped uniform worn by a concentration camp prisoner is displayed in a textiles conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Paintings are displayed in a climate-controlled archive room during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Yellow badges and a piece of luggage are displayed during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A teddy bear is displayed in a textiles conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

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Martin and Ilana Moshav on the podium at the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks at the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A worker peruses the documents archive at The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Sarah Reichert restores a painting in a conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Exterior of the The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center on the he Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A striped uniform worn by a concentration camp prisoner is displayed in a textiles conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Paintings are displayed in a climate-controlled archive room during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Yellow badges and a piece of luggage are displayed during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A teddy bear is displayed in a textiles conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

“Before we opened this building, it was very difficult to exhibit our treasures that were kept in our vaults. They were kind of secret,” said Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. "Now there’s a state-of-the-art installation (that) will help us to exhibit them.”

The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, located at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, will also provide organization and storage for the museum’s 225 million pages of documents and half a million photographs.

Dayan said the materials will now be kept in a facility that preserves them in optimal temperatures and conditions.

“Yad Vashem has the largest collections in the world of materials related to the Holocaust," Dayan said. “We will make sure that these treasures are kept for eternity."

The new facility includes advanced, high-tech labs for conservation, enabling experts to revisit some of the museum’s trickier items, such as a film canister that a family who fled Austria in 1939 brought with them. It was donated to the museum but arrived in an advanced state of decay.

“The film arrived in the worst state it could. It smelled really bad,” said Reut Ilan-Shafik, a photography conservator at Yad Vashem. Over the years, the film had congealed into a solid piece of plastic, making it impossible to be scanned.

Using organic solvents, conservators were able to restore some of the film’s flexibility, allowing them to carefully unravel pieces of it. Using a microscope, Ilan-Shafik was able to see a few frames in their entirety, including one showing a couple kissing on a bench in a park and other snapshots of Europe before World War II.

“It is unbelievable to know that the images of the film that we otherwise thought lost to time” have been recovered, said Orit Feldberg, granddaughter of Hans and Klara Lebel, the couple featured in the film reel.

Feldberg’s mother donated the film canister, one of the few things the Lebels were able to take with them when they fled Austria.

“These photographs not only tell their unique story but also keep their memory vibrantly alive,” Feldberg said.

Conservation of items from the Holocaust is an expensive, painstaking process that has taken on greater importance as the number of survivors dwindles.

Last month, the Auschwitz Memorial announced it had finished a half-million-dollar project to conserve 3,000 of the 8,000 pairs of children’s shoes that are on display at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

Ecuador's incumbent president and a leftist lawyer again vie for the top job in election runoff

2025-04-14 02:07 Last Updated At：02:11

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuadorians are voting Sunday in the country’s presidential election runoff, facing the choice between incumbent President Daniel Noboa and leftist lawyer Luisa González.

Noboa, a conservative young millionaire, and González have both promised voters solutions to the extortions, killings, kidnappings and other crimes that became part of everyday life as the country emerged from the pandemic. Analysts expect the result in Sunday’s vote to have a very tight margin.

It’s the second presidential runoff election in less than two years in the South American country, where voting is mandatory.

Voters chose Noboa over González in the runoff of a snap election in October 2023. The candidates advanced to Sunday’s contest after polling most votes in February’s first-round election. Noboa won 44.17% of the votes while González garnered 44%.

Voters are primarily worried about the violence that transformed the country, starting in 2021 — a spike in crime tied to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Both candidates have promised tough-on-crime policies, better equipment for law enforcement and international help to fight drug cartels and local criminal groups.

“My vote is clear,” said Irene Valdez, a retiree who voted for Noboa. “I want to continue living in freedom.”

Martín Constante, a 19-year-old university student, had a different view. “I think Luisa is going to change things, because Noboa has been very authoritarian,” he said. “Our country needs a lot of changes.”

More than 13 million people are eligible to vote, which is mandatory for adults up to the age of 65. It is optional for people aged 16 and 17 and over 65. Failure to vote results in a $46 fine.

In 2023, Noboa and González were largely unknown to most voters as they sought the presidency for the first time. They were first-term lawmakers in May 2023, when then-President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly, shortening his own mandate as a result and triggering that year’s snap election.

Noboa’s first foray into politics was his stint as lawmaker. An heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, Noboa opened an event-organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas.

González, 47, held various government jobs during the presidency of Rafael Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 through 2017 with free-spending socially conservative policies and grew increasingly authoritarian in his last years as president.

Noboa, 37, declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” in January 2024, allowing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to the streets to combat gangs and to charge people with terrorism counts for alleged ties to organized crime groups.

Under his watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024. But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.

Some of Noboa’s heavy-handed crime-fighting tactics have come under scrutiny for testing the limits of laws and norms of governing. He has also been criticized for allegations of electoral anomalies he made after February’s vote.

Following the first-round election, Noboa said there had been “many irregularities” and that in certain provinces “there were things that didn’t add up.” He provided no further details or evidence. Electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the European Union ruled out fraud.

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.