The ‘Hall of Names’ commemorating victims of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Photo: David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and its genealogy affiliate JewishGen has announced a new partnership with Yad Vashem that will enable the public to gain more access to genealogical records.

“By making available these precious records via JewishGen, the broader Jewish community can more easily research names of family and friends who were murdered during the Holocaust,” said Museum of Jewish Heritage President and CEO Jack Kliger. “The agreement facilitates access to the resources of our museum and Yad Vashem, two of the most prestigious Holocaust memorial institutions in the world.”

The partnership will allow researchers to access Yad Vashem’s Pages of Testimony when doing a genealogical search on the JewishGen website, which is the largest online resource for Jewish genealogy and includes nearly 3.8 million Holocaust records.

JewishGen Executive Director Avraham Groll said that “this common access to data from both institutions will directly benefit researchers by increasing the likelihood that they will find useful information.”

In the 1950s, Yad Vashem began collecting the Pages of Testimony, in which the public can memorialize family members and friends killed in the Holocaust. They contain names, biographical details and photos of those killed in the Holocaust. To date, Yad Vashem has gathered some 2.7 million such pages.

Alexander Avram, director of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, said: “More than 1 million Holocaust victims have yet to be memorialized at Yad Vashem. It is our expectation that by widening the exposure of our endeavor 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.”