Jerusalem: Israel`s Yad Vashem Holocaust
museum announced on Tuesday that it has managed to identify
two-thirds of the estimated six million Jewish victims of the
Nazi genocide.
"In the past decade we have succeeded in adding about 1.5
million victims` names to the names database," Yad Vashem
chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement announcing the
database now contains more than four million names.
"The Germans sought not only to destroy the Jews, but to
obliterate any memory of them," said Shalev.
"One of Yad Vashem`s central missions since its
foundation, the recovery of each and every victim`s name and
personal story, has resulted in relentless efforts to restore
the names and identities of as many of the six million Jews
murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices as possible."
Yad Vashem said about 2.2 million names came from the
testimonies of relatives and friends of the victims, while the
rest came from archives and the research of historians.
However some two million names remain missing and finding
them was particularly problematic in east European countries,
the former soviet Union and Greece, where there were not proper records of Jewish communities or the deportations.
