Anne Langer, Assistant at the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, co-organised this recent EHRI workshop and explains the programme of the event.

The international EHRI-Workshop, Names of Shoah Victims: From scattered Sources to Individual Personal Stories was held at EHRI partner Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in cooperation with Yad Vashem from October 20-21. The participants, from all over Europe and the US, 27 representatives of leading Holocaust research institutions from 12 different countries as well as various guest auditors, gathered at the Information Centre at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.At the beginning of the meeting Uwe Neumärker, Director of the Foundation, welcomed the guests. He emphazised the importance of the place to the theme of the workshop – the search for individual biographies of Holocaust victims for a dignified commemoration. Uwe Neumärkers speech was followed by an introductory lecture held by Dr. Haim Gertner, Director of the Archives Division at Yad Vashem.

Topics

The topics of the meeting were divided into three sessions with different approaches to the research of names:

• Local and cross border initiatives.  
• Large scale projects and technical or methodological aspects
• Locating new or additional names sources

The spectrum of presentations ranged from projects of remembrance and didactics of history to rather technical inputs on victim’s databases. Especially in the field of databases the participants used the workshop in order to exchange expertise on a very detailed level. The question of how to gather widely scattered sources about persecutees (i.e. deportation lists or identity cards) and to prepare them for a research in a sensible way was challenged. Both methodological problems have been addressed, such as the different transcriptions of names and places, but also data privacy regulations in different countries. In addition, new or less noticed sources and their quality for the discovery of additional names could be included into the discussion, such as video testimonies, compensation files or early sources on the Holocaust.

The meaning of EHRI

Again the workshop pointed out that various research institutions often use the same sources to document biographies of Holocaust victims. However, the knowledge of each other's projects is still low. Against this background, the importance of a comprehensive research platform like EHRI which also serves as a network once more became clear.

Participants from the following institutions took part in the workshop: Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin; Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam; Mauthausen Memorial; Memorial Place Silent Heroes, Berlin; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington; Kaserne Dossin, Mechelen; Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, Vienna; Bundesarchiv, Berlin; ITS, Bad Arolsen; Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris; Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies; Auschwitz Museum; Centro di Documentazione Ebraica, Milano; Oxford Brookes University; Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

Read the workshop programme.

Photos from the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe:

• 1.Director Uwe Neumärker welcomes the participants
• 2. Jan Ludwig and Nicolai M. Zimmermann from Bundesarchiv speaking about the Memorial Book and the List of Jewish Residents
• 3. Ulrich Baumann guides the guests through the exhibition of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe