• Home
• Articles Archive
• Features List

• Media Pack
• Contact Us
• Subscribe

KEEPING THE HOLOCAUST MEMORIES ALIVE

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 6, Issue 3 - April 2006

The face looking out at us from the cover of this month's issue needs little introduction, even though Anne Frank died 61 years ago, at the age of 15. Her image - and world-celebrated diary - probably symbolises more than anything else the Holocaust in all of its horror and, yes, triumph of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Since the Second World War, there has been a concerted effort to make sure the memory of the millions who died will never be allowed to fade away. Nowhere is this more evident than at Yad Vashem, a vast, sprawling complex of tree-studded walkways leading to museums, exhibits, archives, monuments, sculptures and memorials in Jerusalem.

Located on Har Hazikaron, the Mount of Remembrance, Yad Vashem - also known as the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority - was established in 1953 by an act of the Israeli Knesset. Since its inception, Yad Vashem has been entrusted with documenting the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust period, preserving the memory and story of each of the six million victims, and imparting the legacy of the Holocaust for generations to come through its archives, library, school and museums.

The Archive Collection, the largest and most comprehensive repository of material on the Holocaust in the world, comprises almost 100 million pages of documents and hundreds of thousands of photographs, along with thousands of films and videotaped testimonies of survivors. The library houses tens of thousands of titles in many languages, countless periodicals and a large number of rare and precious items, establishing itself as the most significant Holocaust library globally.

Meanwhile, the Hall of Names serves as a tribute to the victims by remembering them not as anonymous numbers, but as individual human beings. The 'Pages of Testimony' are symbolic gravestones, which record names and biographical data of millions of martyrs, as submitted by family members and friends. To date, Yad Vashem has computerised 3.2 million names of Holocaust victims, compiled from approximately 2 million pages of testimony and various other lists.

Now Yad Vashem's management team are embarked on a quest to digitise much of its existing archives and library. The goal is ultimately to offer as much of its documentation, names database and testimonies via the Internet, on-demand, from anywhere in the world. It is an astoundingly ambitious project, yet in keeping with the tenacious efforts across the decades on behalf of all those who perished. On page 18, we reveal how today's storage technology is at the centre of the drive to keep that past alive, and those who died honoured and cherished.