The Hindu : International : Website on Holocaust victims

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 22, 2004

International

International

Website on Holocaust victims

JERUSALEM, NOV. 21. Israel's Holocaust museum unveiled a website on Sunday giving Internet users access to biographical information on 3 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators — the most comprehensive database of its kind.

The Yad Vashem museum's site, which will be formally launched on Monday, digitises the centre's 50 years of work in compiling information on Holocaust victims. The list — the largest and most detailed available — can already be accessed in both English and Hebrew.

``Yad Vashem undertook to retrieve the names of the Jewish victims and to preserve their memory,'' a message on the site declared. ``This is the moral duty of the Jewish people, our last respects to the victims.''

Eager to be part of the computer era, the museum put some 1,500 people to work a decade ago, turning written testimony into digital information, said Esti Yaari, Yad Vashem's media liaison.

In the past year, workers focused on getting all the data onto the Internet.

``We are also launching an 11th-hour drive to get more information because we realise that time is running out,'' Yaari said. Yad Vashem is determined to get information on all 6 million Holocaust victims.

According to the website, nearly half of the victims killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators are documented in the database.

Nearly three million times, small details repeat themselves: a place of birth, a marital status, a maiden name, a place of death.

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