Yad Vashem genealogy partnership

Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum Yad Vashem has entered into a partnership with the Museum of Jewish Heritage (MJH) with the aim of sharing data on genealogical records.

The agreement between two of the most prestigious Holocaust memorial institutions in the world will mean Yad Vashem making its records available to the wider public through the MJH genealogy affiliate JewishGen.

“By making available these precious records… the broader Jewish community can more easily research names of family and friends who were murdered in the Holocaust,” said MJH chief executive Jack Kliger.

Under the terms, Yad Vashem will share its ‘Pages of Testimony’ data with
JewishGen, which helps Jews discover Jewish ancestral roots.

A Page of Testimony is a form issued by Yad Vashem asking for information about a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Its database currently holds 2.7 million of these.

Researchers will soon be able to retrieve Pages of Testimony data through a direct search within JewishGen.

“Without this agreement, many Jewish genealogists may otherwise not have been aware of this vital resource,” said JewishGen executive director Avraham Groll.

Yad Vashem has collated Pages of Testimony since the 1950s, helping hundreds of thousands of people reconnect to their family members and Jewish roots.

“More than one million Holocaust victims have yet to be memorialised at Yad Vashem,” said Alexander Avram, director of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names. “It is our expectation that by widening the exposure of our endeavour through JewishGen, the genealogical community will be able to play an important role in helping us add a large number of Pages of Testimony in the years to come.”

The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial