Five leading German companies pledge help for Yad Vashem

Five leading German companies — Daimler, Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen and the football club Borussia Dortmund — have announced that they will donate €5 million to the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem.

The companies say they view their effort as “a clear sign of our solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust, and as our responsibility, past and future, in the fight against racism and antisemitism”.

The money will go to the expansion of Yad Vashem which is building a Shoah Heritage Collections Centre, housing its increasing collection of Holocaust-era artefacts. Construction is expected to begin in August this year.

The chairman of the German Friends of Yad Vashem, former Bild newspaper editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, said that he was “wholeheartedly overjoyed” over the five companies’ commitment “to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and the commemoration of its victims for future generations.”