Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate receives a list of Holocaust victims' names from Antonczyk Krzysztof, of the digital collection at the Auschwitz Museum. Credit: Isaac Harari
Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate receives a list of Holocaust victims' names from Ward Adriaens, director of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Remembrance in Mechelen, Belgium. Credit: Isaac Harari
08 September 2004
Yad Vashem has received a disk containing 68,000 names of victims murdered in Auschwitz, almost two thirds of them Jewish. The disk, containing names and other personal information taken from the death registers from Auschwitz between 1942-44 was provided by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was presented by Antonczyk Krzysztof, a chief of the digital collection at the Auschwitz Museum to Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate during an international conference on “Recording the Names,” at Yad Vashem.
Another disk, containing names and other personal information of more than 25,000 Jews who were deported from Belgium to extermination camps was presented by Ward Adriaens, Director of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Remembrance in Mechelen, Belgium on the same occasion.
The names of these Jewish victims were already published in the form of memorial books but the revised and updated names databases handed to Yad Vashem will greatly enhance the public access to these most valuable sources of information on Shoah victims.
Twenty experts on gathering names of Holocaust victims met with Yad Vashem specialists this week (September 6-7) for working meetings on the international effort to record the names of Holocaust victims.
Delegates from twelve countries have the opportunity to learn about the project to uplink Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims Names to its website, and will be part of a pilot program in advance of the Internet launch of the Database. The meetings are an opportunity for participants to receive updates, share information, discuss advancements in technology and search capabilities and strengthen cooperation between the various Holocaust institutes represented.
This is the third gathering of the international “Recording the Names” workshop focusing on the gathering, documentation and computerization of the names and personal details of millions of victims of the Holocaust.
Serge Klarsfeld of France, himself a Holocaust survivor who many years ago initiated the gathering and documentation of the names of all French Jews deported to concentration camps during World War II, will offer closing remarks. Dr. Wesley Fisher, Executive Director of the Victim List Project, is attending as an observer on behalf of Judge Edward E. Korman, who presides over the distribution of funds from the Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation against Swiss Banks.
Representatives of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USA), Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (USA), International Tracing Service, ITS - Arolsen (Germany) Joods Museum van Deportatie en Verzet Mechelen (Belgium), Beit Terezin (Israel), Panstwowe Muzeum w Osweicimiu (Poland), Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (France), Terezinksa Inciativa (Czech Republic), Dokumentationasarchiv des Osterreichischen Widerstandes (Austria), Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea Milano (Italy), Gedenkbuch Ravensbrueck (Germany), KZ-Gedenkstaette Flossenbuerg (Germany), Holocaust Documentation Center and Memorial Collection Public Foundation Budapest (Hungary), Project for the computerization of names from Slovakia (Slovakia), Project for computerization of names from Lithuania (Israel), Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archive, Jerusalem (Israel), Central Zionist Archives (Israel), and Illegal Immigration Database, Atlit (Israel) participated in the meeting.
