Digitization

The digitization of all Yad Vashem’s databases is a national mission and a unique technological challenge. When completed, any individual will be able to access a picture of every victim, every survivor and every place or event in Holocaust history about whom or about which information exists. Over the last 50 years, Yad Vashem has collected tens of millions of documents, testimonies, artifacts and photographs, and tens of thousands of lists, which include the names of millions of Jews.
The first part of the digitization project was completed with the uploading of the Central Database of Holocaust Victims’ Names onto the Internet in November 2004. The Database contains over 3 million names of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In the coming years, Yad Vashem will continue this digitization process of all its databases, and will upload them onto the Internet. Next to be uploaded will be Yad Vashem’s Photo Archive, which contains more than 263,000 photographs.
For further information about  the names database, click here.

Central Database of Holocaust Victims’ Names

In 1998, the international commission handling dormant Swiss bank accounts – The Volker Commission – entrusted Yad Vashem with the task of digitizing the names database at Yad Vashem. The project to digitize the Pages of Testimony was one of the most sensitive and complex operations ever handled by Yad Vashem. The millions of Pages were scanned, and each day, over a period of about five months, approximately 1000 people (mostly students specially trained for this task) deciphered and typed out the names, which had been written in tens of different languages. At the end of the project, over 4 million names were handed over to the Volker Commission, approximately 3 million of which were names of Holocaust victims.

The process of scanning archival materials and transferring them into digitized format is carried out in the Digitization Center at Yad Vashem. The materials include written documents, photographs, and audio/video tapes.

The Central Database of Holocaust Victims’ Names was uploaded onto the Internet in November 2004, at a special press conference called at Yad Vashem and attended by Minister of Education, Culture and Sport Limor Livnat.

The digitization of all the databases at Yad Vashem is a national mission and a unique technological challenge.  When completed, any individual will be able to access a picture of every victim, every survivor and every place or event in Holocaust history about whom or about which information exists.

 
Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority