Hello everyone, welcome to Times Will Tell, a weekly podcast by The Times of Israel. 

This week, in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are speaking with the out-going, longtime head of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev. Shalev will speak about the United Nation’s 2005 adoption of January 27 -- the day Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army -- as the global commemoration of the Holocaust. We also speak about cynical political uses of Holocaust memory, researchers’ undying battle for truth, and how Yad Vashem is much more than a mere museum.

Next, we’ll speak with Yad Vashem educator Orit Margaliot, who has put together a new virtual tour of Auschwitz’s Block 27 pavilion in Poland, which is also under Yad Vashem’s auspices.

And finally we speak with Dana Porat, the director of Yad Vashem’s digital division, about her team’s work online, which has only become more critical over the past year.

During this episode we will hear music commissioned for Yad Vashem, including the piece “Facing the Loss,” which was a joint production between artist Uri Tzaig and Amir Lloyd, and a setting of "Ani Ma'amin" from an installation by Hagit Shimoni.

PHOTO: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland, May 10, 2017. (Isaac Harari/FLASH90)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week we’re traveling to Europe and speaking with two impressive individuals.

First, we'll hear a short chat with 29-year-old Swedish composer Jacob Mühlrad, who, just ahead of the January 27th International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is releasing his a-cappella choir piece, “Kaddish” on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. Based on texts written by Elie Wiesel and recorded testimony from Mühlrad's Holocaust survivor grandfather, the piece is a spellbinding wall of sound. (Stick around until the end of the program when we’ll play the piece in full.)

Next, we speak with Brussels-based Katharina von Schnurbein, who is the first European Commission Coordinator on Combatting Anti-Semitism. We speak about the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism, and about some of its practical — and problematic — results.

Images: Composer Jacob Mühlrad (Andre Garcia); European Commission Coordinator on Combatting Anti-Semitism Katharina von Schnurbein (courtesy)

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Welcome to Times will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week we go onsite to the banks of the Jordan River near Jericho to attend the first mass in 54 years at a Franciscan church called the St. John the Baptist Chapel.

Along with another dozen or so churches on both sides of the Jordan, the chapel commemorates the site where it is traditionally thought that Jesus was baptized. To make the day even more special, for the Catholic church that date marks the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Meaning, the priests were commemorating the day of Jesus’s baptism at the place where he was meant to have been baptized.

Why has it been so long since the monks were able to hold mass here? Well, the Franciscans only received permission to re-enter the church compound in October. During the 1967 Six Day War, the entire Qasr Al-Yahud baptismal site area was littered with thousands of landmines. In a cooperative, multi-year mission between the UK-based Halo Trust and the IDF, the entire area has been cleared.

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