Lecture
Leon Duval
Thursday 29.01.2026
Leon Duval
From Nightmare to Icon, the History of Yad Vashem
Thursday 29.01.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 29 January at 5:00pm (UK).
Summary
The idea for establishing a memorial in Israel to preserve the memory of victims of the Holocaust dates back to 1942. The idea became a reality when the Yad Vashem authority was established by an act of the Israeli Knesset in 1953. Located in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem has emerged as a global center for Holocaust remembrance, education, and research. In this session we explore important milestones in the Yad Vashem story, and take you on a mini tour of its campus on Har Hazikaron.
Leon Duval
Leon Duval was born in Johannesburg but moved to Australia with his wife and daughters in 1975. The Victorian culture confronted in the days before Australia became ethnically diverse prompted them to shorten their surname to Duval. An accountant by profession, Leon discovered that many of the clients he looked after were Holocaust survivors which prompted him to search for a greater understanding of his Jewish inheritance and the underlying causes driving antisemitism. After retiring from professional life and moving to Jerusalem, Leon undertook an extensive course to train as a guide for the Yad Vashem history museum and is now a committed amateur historian spending many hours researching the history of the Jews in Europe and that of his own family’s Lithuanian roots. His occasional blog appears on the Times of Israel platform and he recently published a book telling the story of a Kindertransport survivor.