by Cynthia Wroclawski

When the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names was uploaded onto the Internet in November last year, Yad Vashem announced an International 11th Hour Campaign to gather as many additional names as possible, “before the generation that best remembers them is no longer with us.” A call on individuals, families and communities worldwide went out to help in this “race against time.” The response has been astonishing: in the first six months since the uploading of the Names Database, over five million visits to the site have been recorded, with some 87.5 million pages viewed. People from 186 countries all over the world have visited the site including, most recently, the Solomon and Seychelles Islands, and Yemen.

In the United States, two particular names gathering projects have made a tremendous impact on the collection effort, as well as on their own communities. Beginning with broad newspaper and radio coverage of the names project, the Florida Chapter of the American Society for Yad Vashem recruited and trained volunteers to help survivors record information on family and friends murdered in the Holocaust. Initially, the volunteers met survivors at their homes and succeeded in collecting up to 40 Pages of Testimony from a single contact. Organizers Rochel and George Berman later sought a more efficient way of collecting the data in order to maximize the potential in their community.

Their idea was simple, yet effective. Rather than bring volunteers to individual survivors, they decided to transform the model into a group experience. Working with the cooperation of retirement communities and survivor organizations, they invited survivors to attend a three-hour session at a convenient central location. There, volunteers assisted them in completing their first Page of Testimony, after which they continued to fill out others on their own, or with the help of volunteers when necessary.

The group model has been extremely successful, allowing volunteers to gather information on a large number of Shoah victims in a brief session; in the first session, some 600 Pages of Testimony were collected. To date, some 1,000 Pages have been collected in this manner. But the benefits are also clear to the survivors themselves: they are clearly highly motivated by the setting, surrounded by others filling out Pages of Testimony. The impact on the volunteers is equally positive, one of them calling the experience “powerful—a huge success.”

A different kind of model was employed by Shir Ha-Ma’alot, a URJ (Reform) synagogue in Irvine, California. The community of 550 member families initiated a grassroots project that yielded 150 previously unregistered names. The project was inspired by congregation member Yossie Hollander, the son of Holocaust survivors. A philanthropist and hi-tech entrepreneur, Hollander has played a vital part in uploading the Names Database to Yad Vashem’s website.

From the beginning of January until 5 May (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the synagogue’s Rabbi Richard Steinberg, its administrator Pat Cantor and two congregants who volunteered to coordinate the campaign (Wendy Hirsch Gary and Toni Rios), implemented a number of promotional measures, including weekly sermons and announcements on the topic; printed material, video displays and question and answer sessions; a weekly online news bulletin with links to the website and contact information; a phone outreach campaign; and a direct e-mail appeal from the Rabbi to all the congregants prior to Holocaust Remembrance Day calling for the urgent submission of names. All the materials used were provided by Yad Vashem or created by the congregation.

The project stimulated discussion about the subject with families and friends of all ages, a Bat-Mitzvah girl dedicating her sermon to the Names Project, a feature in a local newspaper and the creation of a Memorial Board, with all the names collected inscribed on six pieces of stained glass (representing the six million victims) created by congregant and artist Linda Wisecup.

Said Rabbi Steinberg: “The Names Project became a sacred obligation of our Congregation. When we read the names before Kaddish at our Remembrance Day Memorial Service—these names that had never been read before or even remembered before that moment—we were moved beyond words that we had participated in the recovery of Jewish history. Our little shul celebrated and memorialized lives that would have otherwise been lost forever. The only way for us to be fully Jewish in the future is for us to actively recover and remember the past.”

A free resource pack for individuals/organizations who would like to initiate a grassroots campaign will soon be available. Please contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il

The author is Marketing Manager for the Online Names’ Database.

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