Unto Every Person There is a Name: Yom HaShoah 2012

A poster designed for this year’s Yom Hashoah, which depicts a family as the shadow of an old man with the words, “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2012”, pays tribute to both the survivors and the millions who were murdered.

Jerusalem, April 18, 2012: The official poster distributed for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) by Yad Vashem and the Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs was designed by Dorielle Rimmer Halperin, a graduate of the Visual Communications Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem.

Creating this poster had a major impact on Rimmer, whose grandparents, Esther and David Rimmer, are Holocaust survivors.

“This was an exciting challenge for me,” said Rimmer, who graduated from Bezalel in 2003. “It’s a real honor for me to be able to pass the message on to every home in Israel. I believe that the message of this poster is very clear and it will touch the heart and provoke thought.

“My design shows that the shadow of the family lying on the road is the shadow of the family who perished and will always be there with the survivors. But this is also the shadow of their new family of survivors, which is there to remember, to preserve them and their heroism,” she said.

“We are often ‘asked’ to remember the Holocaust through famous photographs, movies and the ‘usual’ characters. I tried to remove the memory from what we are so accustomed to seeing, removing a little of the ‘national’ collective memory and making it more personal by showing how it comes into the homes of every one of us and casts a shadow over our daily lives.

“When I look at my grandparents, both Holocaust survivors, in their shadow I see my shadow as well. The lack of light in their lives is always there and will always be a part of me and my family, something we will pass onto future generations,” Rimmer said.

“But around the great shadow of the Holocaust is also light; plenty of light. Holocaust Memorial Day is also about heroism – and not only that of the survivors.”

Rimmer dedicated this poster to her grandparents and their families who were murdered during the Holocaust.