The name of the Wiktoria i Jozef Ulma is seen on the wall commemorating poles who was saving jews during WWII before opening ceremony of The Ulma Family Museum Of Poles Saving Jews in World War II. The Ulma family sacrifice their lives as they were hiding Jews during Holocaust and WWII on March 17, 2014. / AFP PHOTO / WOJTEK RADWANSKIWOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images ORG XMIT: POLAND-HI ORIG FILE ID: 550127004(Photo: WOJTEK RADWANSKI, AFP/Getty Images)
The Nazis<span style="color: Red;">*</span>aimed to erase the Jewish people. Now, 70 years later, contributors around the globe are etching victims'<span style="color: Red;">*</span>names back into memory through an online memorial that's just hit 1 million records.
World Memory Project, a collaboration between the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and genealogy website<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Ancestry, is a free<span style="color: Red;">*</span>online database that lists information about millions of victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
Launched in May 2011, the project hit one million records this month, a major milestone<span style="color: Red;">*</span>made possible through over 3,500 volunteers<span style="color: Red;">*</span>from 18 different countries. The contributors spend hundreds of hours indexing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>archived documents from the Holocaust Museum into an online software provided by Ancestry.
“The Nazis tried to erase these people from history. Today, this achievement helps restore their identities for posterity and honor those who were lost,” said<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Neal Guthrie, director of the Museum’s Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center.
Thousands of people have accessed the database to find information about their ancestors since it started and have requested additional documents from the Museum related to their family members.
“Not knowing what happened to your family is the worst thing that can happen to you,” said Elisabeth Power, a German volunteer from London.
Retired physician Patricia Lewin, 75, started volunteering for the project to search about the ancestors of her deceased Jewish husband, but what she didn’t know was that she herself, despite being from a non-Jewish family, had kin who became victims of the Holocaust.
“My cousin’s husband’s father had died there (in Germany) and it was a big surprise,” said Lewin. “I was excited, but depressed at the same time.”
Lewin, volunteering since the beginning of the project, has indexed about 80,000 names and is the third largest individual contributor to the database.
It's unclear how many records the project will eventually index.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>According to Guthrie,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>finding material<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>volunteers to index is a challenge, since many archives are handwritten and are yet to be digitized. The project is ongoing and will expand the records as more data becomes available, he added. The project website<span style="color: Red;">*</span>includes information about how to donate historical documents<span style="color: Red;">*</span>linked to the Holocaust.
Last year, students from three U.S. high schools also volunteered to index about 7,000 individuals persecuted by the Hitler regime.
“(The project)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>gives you insight into the history of time that you could never possibly learn from a college or university,” Power added. “(Through reviewing)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>documents of people, their names, addresses, photographs, profession and children, you can learn such variety of way of life.”
Powered By WizardRSS.com |
Full Text RSS Feed
