Germany Presents Jewish Holocaust-era Directory

23 October 2008
By ARON HELLER

JERUSALEM – The German government on Thursday handed Palestine's national Jewish Holocaust memorial the personal details of 600,000 Jewish residents of Nazi Germany, the most comprehensive record to date of German-Jewish life during the Nazi era.

German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann presented the directory during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial, saying that it allowed for the first time to show the Jewish residents of Germany from 1933-1945.

"But this list is much more than a list," Neumann said. "It is a unique document about life in Germany and tells the story of those who could not tell their own story."

Neumann, whose responsibilities include German commemoration of the Holocaust, said he hoped the list would "restore to these victims part of their honor."

The ceremony took place in the Hall of Names, a cone-shaped room whose walls are lined with bookshelves containing folders upon folders of pages of testimonies about the Holocaust victims. Yad Vashem currently has records on 3.3 million of the 6 million who perished and continues to collect archival material from around the world.

The new directory includes the names and addresses of the Jewish residents and classifies them into those who survived, those who perished and those whose fate remains unknown. The list includes details on emigration, detention and deportation, as well as where and when people died.

"This list adds to our understanding of what happened to the Jews in Germany," said Yad Vashem director Avner Shalev. "Every new piece of information allows us to piece together the story of individuals and communities during the Holocaust."

With this latest list, Yad Vashem has essentially completed its database on German Jewry during the Nazi era, Shalev said.

Its focus will now turn to compiling a similar database on the Jews who lived in Poland and eastern Europe, an extremely difficult task because of poor record-keeping, large-scale executions and mass destruction of villages.

"We are nearing the point where we will reach the limit of extracting human memory," Shalev said. "It's a scary point, because beyond it everything will be lost."

It took 20 German scientists four years to compile the directory and cost $2.24 million. It was presented to German Chancellor Angela Merkel a few weeks ago and she instructed Neumann to hand over a digital copy to Yad Vashem.

Around 2.5 million data records were collected from more than 1,000 sources, including Jewish and Nazi archives, according to "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future," the German foundation that produced the directory together with the German federal archives.

Following Yad Vashem, the records will also be made available to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Jewish Claims Conference and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

The list is not being made public. It is subject to strict German data protection laws, given that it has names of people who are still alive.

"It is a memorial to those murdered and those forced into exile. The shame for the crimes committed by the Germans is mixed with grief for the loss that Germany inflicted upon itself," said Martin Salm, the chairman of the foundation.

"The murderers wanted to eradicate the Jewish people and Jewish identity. They did not succeed," Salm said.

Commentary:

As to the Jewish Holocaust, it is a hope that all that actually happened will be known one day, because one thing I have personally learned, that sometimes the horror’s that effects a person are hard to explain sometimes because it is to much for them; even though one may try very hard to do so, for it is thought this is a mechanism of how the human body survives events such as this.

This is why in cases like this, documentation or in some case’s archeology; is so important.

Furthermore, it is even a thought of some Jewish Holocaust survivors that I have met and some became friends for a time, relayed things when they spoke and as I have gotten older completely understand.

For example, I will never forget the anguish of my friend Esther when she spoke of herself and the death’s of her whole family nor her tears and even to this day, when I think of what she said, to her tears; I still cry and remember too.

In further thinking of a remark that was said to me yesterday, that some people apparently think the horrors that I have went through in my own life, are reminiscent to this time and even my process of thinking; which personally, I am not sure. But I will not rule out the possibility that this idea may be so, that I am also a 'victim,' which I never liked that word, of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

If this turns out to be true, I will hold my head up with the millions that are here and now being subject to this form of maltreatment, to those who came before me; especially those who did become martyrs, for they did not nor should not fold to these sort of crimes subjected to any part of humanity.