Yaffa Eliach, Historian Who Created Iconic ‘Faces’ of Holocaust, Dies at 79

By Josefin Dolsten November 10, 2016

— Yaffa Eliach, a prominent historian of the Holocaust who opened the first center for Holocaust studies in the United States, has died.

Eliach, a Holocaust survivor, died Wednesday at 79, The Jewish Press reported.

In 1974, she opened the Center for Holocaust Studies in Brooklyn. It later merged with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

Eliach created the “Tower of Life,” or “Tower of Faces” exhibit for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The three-story exhibit features 1,500 photographs from Eishyshok, her Lithuanian birthplace near Vilna, showing life there before the war. Nearly all of the village’s 3,500 Jewish inhabitants were killed during World War II, according to The New York Times.

Eliach also published several books about the Holocaust.

Following the war, she fled to prestate Israel in 1946. Several family members had been killed in the war.

In 1954, she moved to the U.S. with her husband, David Eliach, and studied at Brooklyn College and the City College of New York. In 1969, she started working at Brooklyn College, teaching Jewish studies.

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO