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The Week in Germany: Current Affairs

January 26, 2007

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Survivor's Registry Searching for Holocaust Survivors Worldwide

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is launching a major international initiative to expand its search for Holocaust survivors to include information on survivors living all over the world.

Through its International Holocaust Survivors Outreach Project, the Museum's Registry of Holocaust Survivors is seeking Holocaust survivors in order to assist survivors and their families in their attempts to trace missing relatives, as well as to assist in historical and genealogical research.

"The Registry maintains the most comprehensive listing of Holocaust survivors in the world, currently containing over 195,000 records related to survivors and their families, and has aided tens of thousands of people researching the fates of family members, friends and others who survived the Holocaust," says Jaime Monllor, the project coordinator. "By expanding its database, the Registry can help people from around the world in this effort and build a more complete historical record of Holocaust survivors."

Although most of the survivors who have registered live in North America, the Museum now includes the names of survivors from all backgrounds living all over the world.

The Registry includes the names of all Holocaust survivors - whether or not they are currently living - and defines a survivor as a person who was displaced, persecuted and/or discriminated against by the racial, religious, ethnic and political policies of the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps and ghettos, this includes, among others, refugees and people in hiding.

Since 1993 the Museum's Registry of Holocaust Survivors has provided valuable information to thousands of survivors worldwide, and in some cases has succeeded in re-uniting friends and family members from the Holocaust era. To protect the privacy of survivors and their families, the Registry is not searchable online.

"The Museum has established partnerships with several organizations worldwide that are helping reach out to survivors," continues Monllor. "At the moment we have partnered with organizations in Italy, Austria, Germany, Argentina and Uruguay to assist with this project."

The Museum's website www.ushmm.org/registry contains further information on the Registry as well as downloadable registration forms in 17 languages.

For additional information, please contact the Registry by e-mail: registry@ushmm.org or by mail at Registry of Holocaust Survivors, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, DC 20024.

Almost 24 million people - including more than 8 million schoolchildren - have visited the Museum since it opened in 1993, and through its website, traveling exhibitions and educational programs, it reaches millions more every year. (Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

January 27, 2007, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. First set aside in 2006 by the United Nations General Assembly, it marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. It is also the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism in Germany.

Links:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism (from Germany.info)

Jewish Life in Germany (from Germany.info)

"For the dead and the living we must bear witness" (TWIG, Jan. 26, 2007; essay by a German high school student who recently visited the Museum in Washington)

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