30 January 2024

YIZKOR BOOKS : NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

YIDDISH BOOK CENTER - LINKS TO YIZKOR (MEMORY) BOOKS - HOLOCAUST 

The New York Public Library - Yiddish Book Center Yizkor Book Collection includes 650 digitized Yizkor books from the collections of the two institutions.

You can search this online collection by title and by the name of the towns they commemorate, or browse the list on this website by country and community name.  You can browse both the New York Public Library and Yiddish Book Center digital collections, along with links to ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS on the New York Public Library's Guide to Yizkor Books.


24 January 2024

HOLOCAUST FORGOTTEN : DEDICATED TO THE FIVE MILLION MURDERED IN THE HOLOCAUST WHO WERE NOT JEWISH

HOLOCAUST FORGOTTEN  

'While there is no argument that Hitler abhorred the Jews and caused almost six million to be ruthlessly killed, often non-Jewish victims are tragically forgotten from Holocaust remembrances.  Eleven million precious human lives were lost during the Holocaust.  Five million of these were non-Jewish.  Three million were Polish Christians and Catholics.  It would be very sad to forget even one precious life extinguished so ruthlessly  It wold be a tragedy to forget five million. 

WHY REMEMBERING NON-JEWISH VICTIMS IS IMPORTANT TO US ALL.


Excerpt:  We are familiar with the statistics : nearly 10,000 Jehovah Witnesses imprisoned and at least 2,000 admitted to Nazi concentration camps of which at least half were murdered, over 250 by beheading.    What we do not know as well is the day-to-day existence of this extraordinary group of committed men, women, and children under the rule of National Socialist terror.

++++++

This is not a database site but there's some excellent information on it. 


19 January 2024

UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM : JEWISH PEOPLE - ROMANI (GYPSY) - JEHOVAH WITNESSES

Excerpt from Genocide of European Romani  page:  Roman were anong the groups that the Nazi regine (1933-1945) and its partner regimes singled our for persecution and murder before and during World War II. Roman are pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner in German and as Gypsies" in English.

(Just a note here. I'm not so sure the word gypsy is a pejorative, rather a misnomer, however people do understand when you use the word gypsy and less so when you use the word Roma or Romani.  In my genealogy research I've found there are slang terms for these people in other languages and slang terms for many an ethnic group.)   Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roman, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior."  Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roman to arbitrary internment, sterilization, forced labor in concentration camps, denotation, and mass murder.  German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roman in the German occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers....

UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - START PAGE


USHMM - JEHOVAH WITNESSES - HOLOCAUST


16 January 2024

YAD VASHEM - SEARCHABLE DATABASES and ONGOING DESIRE FOR MORE INFORMATION : THE RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS

YAD VASHAM ; THE WORLD HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE CENTER

Search by town, by person's name, or if you have it, where they died.  But also a database of the Righteous Among Nations, testimonials, history - so very much.  An excellent site to explore. 


People who provide testimonials often also provide a photo of the person they have added to the database and so there is always that possibility that you'll discover a photo.

12 January 2024

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HOLOCAUST - FREE and PAY DATABASES IN EUROPE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - HOLOCAUST STUDIES 

The following is just ONE of the portholes from this web page. 'The Archives Portal Europe is one of the milestones achieved by the participants of the APEnet Project supported by the European Commission in the eContentplus Programme. The project's consortium currently consists of twelve national archives/national archive administrations and five members.

***

  • Archivos Estatales (Spain)
  • Archiwa Państwowe (Poland)
  • Arhiv Republike Slovenije (Slovenia)
  • Bundesarchiv (Germany)
  • Γενικά αρχεία του κράτους (Greece)
  • Direcção-Geral de Arquivos (Portugal)
  • Direction des Archives de France
  • Kansallisarkisto (Finland)
  • Latvijas Arhīvi (Latvia)
  • Nationaal Archief (The Netherlands)
  • National Archives of Malta
  • Riksarkivet (Sweden)
  • National Archives of Ireland
  • National Archives of Belgium
  • Държавна Агенция Арxиви (Bulgaria)
  • Department of Archives Administration and Records Management of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic
  • Rahvusarhiiv (Estonia)

09 January 2024

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION - LAST CHANCE TESTIMONIALS

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION   'We are currently recording survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. If you are a survivor or know someone who is, we would love to hear from you.  We are also looking for interviewers.'

These newly recorded testimonies will be indexed and preserved in the Visual History Archive, along with the testimonies of 52,000 witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, most of them recorded in the 1990's.  The testimonies are used in educational materials, films, and other resources accessed by 35 million people annually.

***

I've posted on Shoah Foundation in the past and so you may already know that you can use their archive for your personal research by appointment.

06 January 2024

HOLOCAUST GENEALOGY - JEWS, JEHOVAH WITNESSES, ROMA, and CATHOLICS and CHRISTIANS TOO - ELEVEN MILLION

The Six Million.  You've heard this term.  I wonder if you know that it applies to the estimated Jewish victims of genocide by the Nazi's prior to and during World War II?  The number is an estimate and based on reportage, concentration camp documents, and the like.  However, another Five Million non-Jewish others were also murdered during the Nazi occupation.  Though the years have gone by, though most of the holocaust survivors are now deceased, though there are holocaust deniers, to this day there are museums and memorials and foundations interested in collecting testimonials.  They were the disabled, children who had African genetics, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses.

This month in which the Holocaust Memorial Day is lodged, I'll be focusing on research and education opportunities about the Holocaust that began in 1939 and continued until the allies which included the United States defeated the Nazi's in Europe.

I recently met a man whose grandfather and uncle died being worked to death because they were Jehovah Witnesses. He had recently gone to Europe and toured the camps in Germany as well as Poland.  As a result of doing some research for him, I decided to go forward with the plan to jam this month with information.


01 January 2024