“When the Nazis rounded us up, they took away our names and gave us numbers. What we are doing here is taking away the numbers and giving them back their names.” Arthur Kurzweil, Jewish Genealogist and author of From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Family History.

 

November 2004 marks one of the greatest technological revolutions in Holocaust Remembrance: the uploading of the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names to the Internet. With its leading-edge search, cross-reference and display capabilities, the site is a one-of-a-kind interactive platform for commemoration and education.  

 

The importance of making the Names' Database available on the Internet cannot be underestimated. As the generation of Holocaust survivors and witnesses is drawing to an end, this is the last chance to collect names of Holocaust victims. Online from 22 November 2004 at www.yadvashem.org, this massive database is accessible to any person, at any time, anywhere in the world.

 

"The online Database creates a link not only with the dead but also among the living, within the Jewish people," said Nobel Laureate Prof. Elie Wiesel as he recently filled out a Page of Testimony for his father, Shlomo. "It strengthens the connections between families, between cities, between communities. Furthermore, it brings a heightened awareness and a deepened sense of remembrance."

 

The Names' Database has three main functions: it enables visitors to search for any of the nearly three million names of Shoah victims recorded to date; it allows users to submit new Pages of Testimony – special forms containing biographical details of individual victims – for those victims as yet unrecorded; and it provides educational material about the Holocaust through the “Stories Behind the Names” feature. Developed by the International School for Holocaust Studies and the Hall of Names, this online learning activity uses Pages of Testimony as the starting point for a personalized educational session. Through links on the Pages themselves, the victim’s life is put into context, through additional historical, geographical, and linguistic information. So, for example, if a victim was a doctor from Lodz who was murdered in Chelmno, the user may learn more about professions common among Jews in the 1930s, the town of Lodz, or the death camp at Chelmno by simply clicking on the relevant part of the Page.

 

On the site’s main search screen, users may enter the victim’s family or maiden name, first name, and location before and during the Shoah. Results yield matches and near-matches, as well as basic biographical details. The unique search engine takes into account phonetics and synonyms in both Latin and Hebrew characters at one and the same time. Users can perform advanced searches for common names or numerous results, where the search may be narrowed using additional search parameters such as dates, names of family members, or even by the names the person who submitted the Page.

 

Two-thirds of the names in the Database were obtained from the more than two million Pages of Testimony submitted to Yad Vashem over the past 50 years, nearly all of which have now been digitized. Other names have been gleaned from additional computerized lists, including deportation, camp and ghetto records. With a click, users can view and print Pages of Testimony, or a screen containing a victim’s personal story, based on information from archival sources available in the Database. Each such “mini-biography” further links to information about the particular victim, such as the places he/she lived and died, related historical events and more.

 

Through the site, users will be encouraged to submit new Pages of Testimony, add photographs or documents to existing ones, or suggest corrections of previously submitted data. Yad Vashem staff will then verify and cross-reference the new information for historical accuracy, and contact the submitter for confirmation. Once verified, the new Pages of Testimony will be added to the Database. Members of the public will also be given the option to manually sign the Pages they have submitted; these may then be housed for perpetuity with existing Pages in the Hall of Names.

 

Based on experience from previous campaigns to collect Pages of Testimony, a major wave of submissions during the months following the launch of the online Names' Database is expected. Submissions will presumably decline somewhat and steady as time passes. Yad Vashem expects to take six to eight months to process each batch of new names during the initial peak, and less following stabilization. Additional resources would enable Yad Vashem to shorten response time, insert new features to the site and add newly digitized lists of names at an accelerated pace.

 

The computerization of names of Shoah victims in the Central Database and its uploading to the Internet is being made possible through the assistance of the Noaber Foundation, established by Paul and Jan Baan, The Victim List Project of the Swiss Banks Settlement, under the supervision of the Honorable Edward R. Korman, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Hi-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist, Mr. Yossi Hollander.