Millions of Holocaust records are made available online for the first time ever by Ancestry.com – allowing people to search for displaced relatives
- Ancestry has made millions of holocaust records just a click away
- The databases are accessible for free and include images
- Passenger lists, burial records, and more can be searched by name and date
- The company says it hopes to preserve the impact of the atrocity with the data
For the first time ever, millions of Holocaust records are available online through a portal on the genetic history website, Ancestry.com.
The records have been digitized with the help of Arolsen Archives’ International Center on Nazi Persecution in Germany and are accessible for free.
Documents include passenger lists, lists of people persecuted, which can be searched by name, birth date and place, destination, and resettlement region.
Ancestry.com had made a wealth of holocaust records available online for the first time ever
‘This collection will help people learn more about the magnitude of the Holocaust, those who lived through it and those who perished as a result of it,’ said Ancestry’s CFO, Howard Hochhauser, in a statement.
Records in the database range in scope. One database focuses on passengers lists that act as a documentation of displaced people from Asia, Africa, and Europe.
According to the company, it encompasses displaced people leaving Germany and other European ports between between 1946 and 1971.
Those records — which include 1.7 million documents and 300,000 images — will be useful in researching ‘holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and certain non-European countries’ said Ancestry.
Records include passenger lists and burial records and span millions of documents and pictures.
As holocaust survivors dwindle, Ancestry said its more important than ever to document the atrocity.
Another database will contain documents on foreigners and German individuals who were persecuted. That includes people who were imprisoned in camps and also people who died, based on burial information.
This section will include nearly 10 million records and 900,000 images.
As noted by Ancestry, in the 70 years since the Holocaust, the number of survivors has fallen to 400,000 people, with many of those survivors reaching 80 and 90-year-old.
Given the dwindling human link to the pass, Ancestry said databases that immortalize the atrocity are more important than ever.
Before the records were made available by the company, a person was required to submit a manual request for photocopies which was often cumbersome and time-consuming.
