09 May 2005
On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, the Memorial for the Murdered Jews in Europe will be officially opened in Berlin. The Memorial, comprising 2,711 concrete stelae of varying heights covering some 19000 square meters, includes an underground Information Center with four Subject Rooms. One of these rooms is dedicated to the names of Jews killed in the Shoah, and on its wall will be projected the names, birth dates, death dates, and short bios of some of the victims. Upon a request from the Memorial’s founders, Yad Vashem has made the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names available to the Memorial and developed a German interface for the Database, which will allow visitors to explore the website from a special foyer dedicated to the Database and Yad Vashem.
The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names contains some 3 million names of Holocaust victims, 2/3 of which come from Pages of Testimony filled out by friends and family of the victims. The remaining million come from archival sources.
Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, will attend the opening ceremonies of the new Memorial in Berlin, which will take place with the participation of the Director of the Foundation for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse, Dr. h. c. Paul Spiegel, President of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, Prof. Peter Eisenman, architect of the Memorial, Sabina van der Linden, nee Haberman, a survivor of the Holocaust (currently living in Sydney), as well as Lea Rosh, Chair of the Association for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
“The integration of the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names in the Memorial has great importance, as it gives a personal-human perspective to remembrance.”
Avner Shalev
