Unto Every Person There is a Name

"We were first told to
undress - clothes on one
side, shoes on other - then
we entered the room, naked
as the day of our birth. It
was here that we were given
a number and heard the Konzentrationlagerfuehrer
[Concentration Camp Commandant] say: 'From
this day forth, you are all numbers. You no longer
have names. You have
no identities. You have no nationalities. All you have
is your number, and besides
your number, you have
nothing at all.'

Since 1955, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Remembrance Authority has been gathering the names of the victims of the Holocaust. Lists of deportees, inmates of concentration camps, Jews who lived in ghettoes and persons displaced after the war have been collected and stored. But the information contained in these lists was usually limited to name, date and place of origin. It was therefore decided to create "Pages of Testimony", to be filled by family members, friends or acquaintances of persons who had disappeared, or had been murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Data about the victim's family, his/her occupation, whereabouts during the war and the circumstances of his/her disappearance or death personalizes the tragedy of the intangible and anonymous "Six Million", says Alexander Avraham, Director of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem.

By the end of the 1990s, some 800,000 Pages of Testimony had been collected, including tens of thousands of pages filled by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. But Avraham realized that time was running out.

Shortly before Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day in April 1999, Yad Vashem launched an international $1 million campaign entitled "Unto Every Person there is a Name". The aim was to collect the names of every man, woman and child killed during the Holocaust. The Nazis had taken away the names of their victims and replaced them with numbers; the project was to return their identities and commemorate them.

The response was overwhelming. More than 380,000 new testimonies have been submitted to date. Avraham credits much of the response to its timing. In the initial post-war years, he explains, survivors found the topic very difficult to address, or still clung to the belief that their loved ones had somehow survived. Others found the task of giving testimony, often concerning dozens of relatives and friends too daunting; some were simply too involved with rebuilding their shattered lives. As a result, relatively few Pages of Testimony arrived at Yad Vashem.

Today the climate has changed. In the past few years, the Holocaust has become a topic discussed worldwide, especially in the area of restoration of property. Also, members of the survivors' generation, now very advanced in years, have realized that this may be their last chance to formally record the fate of their relatives and friends.

An interesting phenomenon that has come to light in the course of the campaign is the special relationship between survivors and their grandchildren. Often, Alexander relates, survivors couldn't face telling their children about their experiences and the "second generation" grew up in an atmosphere of silence and grief. This silence was broken many years later, when grandparents told their stories to their grandchildren. An example of third-generation involvement is the case of 14-year-old Ron Haber from New Zealand. Ron was so moved by his visit to Yad Vashem a year ago that he took back home with him Pages of Testimony for his grandfather, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, to fill. Ron's initiative came not a moment too soon, as his grandfather passed away several months later. In his memory, Ron, together with a teacher and some classmates, collected testimonies from all the Holocaust survivors in New Zealand - some 300 Pages of Testimony - and forwarded them to Yad Vashem.

Other private initiatives were taken by: a German priest and teacher who made it a class project to gather the names of Jews from their town who were killed during the Holocaust; and twelve-year-old Ben Wind from Texas, who wrote to Yad Vashem asking for 200 blank Pages of Testimony which he filled completed and returned in person when he came to celebrate his Bar-Mitzvah in Jerusalem later that year. The National Students' Union of Israel has pledged itself to the operation, and recruited dozens of students to help survivors fill out Pages of Testimony. Over 1,000 Pages were collected in this way from survivors now living in retirement homes in Israel. Abroad, Jewish organizations, community centers, newspapers and Israel's embassies have assisted local Yad Vashem societies with the project. However, only ten percent of the testimonies have come from outside of Israel, and Avraham believes that the project is still in need of more publicity abroad.

The Pages are made of special acid-free paper, and are available from Yad Vashem, by mail or e-mail in fourteen languages. Both sections (concerning the victim and the survivor) must be filled out, each form for one victim only (not groups or families) and the information must be about a victim of the Holocaust, not - albeit a tragedy - someone who perished in a pogrom before the war, a survivor who was killed after arrival in Israel, or an allied soldier killed in battle. There is a space on the form for a photograph of the victim; some four to five percent of the testimonies submitted have photos attached. Incomplete or photocopied forms are accepted, but only if they are signed and dated by hand, since they are considered legal documents.

In 1992, a comprehensive computer program was initiated, which facilitated access to the huge reservoir of information already collected. The program can also translate place names and personal names into different languages, which allows for quicker cross-referencing and identification of duplicate entries. This is vital since some 16 million names appear on the thousands of lists that Yad Vashem has obtained, and which contain multiple references to many people, as they were transferred from place to place. The program thus enables relatives to find out where their loved ones spent their last months, and where they died. Alexander hopes that one day this service will be available on the Internet.

A staff of 25 checks the completed pages on arrival at Yad Vashem. After being scanned into the computer, the Pages are placed in alphabetical order in memorial files - symbolic tombstones - in the Hall of Names, which is kept at a temperature and level of humidity necessary for their preservation. Next to the Hall is a room where visitors can use the five computer terminals to search for information about lost relatives and friends.

Searches at times turn up unexpected results. In 1941, Leonid Sheiman was separated from his family - parents, four brothers and a sister - and was drafted into the Soviet army. His efforts after the war to find members of his family were all in vain. In June 2000, five years after he immigrated from Poland, Leonid's daughter encouraged him to write to Yad Vashem. Researchers were able to tell him that in 1991, his brother Lazar, who had arrived in Israel in 1957, had filed Pages of Testimony regarding his family - including Leonid - all of whom he believed to be dead. After 59 years, the two brothers were reunited.

Altogether, the program contains some five million individual references. Avraham does not believe that all six million names will ever be collected: the biggest "hole", he explains, is Central Europe, where people were murdered where they lived - thus their names do not appear on any official lists - and where so few survived to give testimony.

By personalizing the individual tragedy of the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust, the project seeks to counteract trends of indifference and ignorance, and to discredit Holocaust deniers who seek to convince the world that the Holocaust never happened.

"With each name added," Alexander believes, "the memory of a whole life is revived. Every new name recorded in the Hall of Names is a victory against oblivion."