A Global Partnership

by Estee Yaari

Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev receives a list of Holocaust victims’ names from Krzystof Antonczyk, chief of the digital collection at the Auschwitz Museum

Yad Vashem has received a disk containing 68,000 names of victims killed at Auschwitz, almost two-thirds of them Jewish. The disk - listing names and other personal information taken from Auschwitz death registers between 1942-44 - was provided by the Memorial and Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was presented by Krzysztof Antonczyk, chief of the digital collection at the Auschwitz Museum, to Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, during the third gathering of the international “Recording the Names” workshop at Yad Vashem in September.

At the gathering, 20 experts in the field met with Yad Vashem specialists for working meetings on the international effort to record the names of Holocaust victims. Delegates from 12 countries were given the opportunity to learn about the uploading of Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names to its website, and were part of a pilot program in advance of its launch. The meetings enabled participants to receive updates, share information, discuss advancements in technology and search capabilities and strengthen cooperation between the various Holocaust institutes represented. 

During the gathering, another disk containing names and personal information of more than 25,000 Jews deported from Belgium to extermination camps was presented to Yad Vashem by Ward Adriaens, Director of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Remembrance in Mechelen, Belgium. The names of these Jewish victims were already published in memorial books but the revised and updated names databases given to Yad Vashem will greatly enhance public access to these most valuable sources of information on Shoah victims.

Executive Director of the Victim List Project Dr. Wesley Fisher attended the conference 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. Also participating were representatives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 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).

Holocaust survivor Serge Klarsfeld - who many years ago initiated the gathering and documentation of the names of all French Jews deported to concentration camps during World War II—presented the closing remarks. 

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