Finding Friends and Family We are often asked for help in locating information about family or friends who are missing or who perished in the Holocaust. We can't help you locate your loved ones, but we can direct you to the following resources: See the Jewish Genealogy list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for genealogy information: http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/faq.html. JewishGen is about the most important resource in such searches. One can search for names and places, also using the Daitch-Mokotoff soundex. The Family Finder and other databases are an extremely important resource because the names are often spelled in many different ways. One of our contributors was once searching for a family of the Lemberg area, where there were three different spellings of the places: Polish, German, Ukrainian. Names are written in many different ways as well. With a bit of luck one might even trace a relative on the JewishGen online resources. Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority is located in Jerusalem, Israel. Their web site offers resources to help you. "The Hall of Names" contains the names and biographical details of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. "The Righteous Among the Nations" are non-Jews who risked their lives to save persecuted Jews during the Holocaust and "The Photo Archives" which contains both photographs and moving pictures. These three facilities constitute the largest repository of Holocaust documentation in the world and offers rare material that exists no where else. Visit Yad Vashem at http://www.yadvashem.org/. Note that they do not provide an online source for searching for people. We reccomend you contact the US Holocaust Museum Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors for information about survivors who moved to the United States. Vist them at http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/registry.html. American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing and Information Center Address: American Red Cross 4700 Mount Hope Drive Baltimore, MD 21215 Phone: (401) 764-5311 Fax: (410) 764-4638 This is a national clearing house for Holocaust and World War II tracing inquiries. American Red Cross provides a link to the International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany. They offer: Documentation of deportation, internment or death when available for relatives or friends lost in ghettos or camps. They help trace those known to have survived. They trace rescuers. Provide documentation of internment for reparations or pensions. You can call a local Red Cross Chapter to request a form to initiate a "Trace". The American Red Cross provides this search and coordinates it out of their Baltimore, MD office. People from other countries than the U.S. should contact their local Red Cross Chapter. Do not write directly to Arolsen. Before sending in any information to the Red Cross, one should be aware that "updating" your search file is almost impossible. So, as much research as possible has to be done before. There is a wonderful web page dedicated to information on tracing in the Children of Survivors section of the Cybrary of the Holocaust, at: http://remember.org/children/tracing.html. They also have a Webchat on the subject with Gary Mokotoff at http://www.remember.org/ideas/mokotoff.html. Give them a try. For those whose relatives lived in Austria, the Israelitische Kultus Gemeinde Wien, 1010 Wien, Seitenstettengasse 4 is a resource. A friend of Nizkor writes: "The Gemeinde was able to tell me the date of my grandparents' deportation from Vienna, the destination of the transport and also their last address in Vienna. I had an answer within a month of inquiring." [The same friend also mentioned a disappointing experience with the Red Cross Tracing Service, by the way.] A web site to help identify children who lost their identities in the Holocaust used to reside at: http://www.netvision.net.il/missing-identity/. But this URL no longer seems to function, however. If you find the new URL, please contact us. The web site was built by Israeli Television and Netvision. It also includes links to other genealogy sites and has pictures and identifying information of children who lost their identity in the Holocaust. If your family and friends were from Poland, you may visit The Polish Jewish Genealogy Home - run by Pawel Brunon Dorman dorman@plearn.edu.pl. Some of the information at this site, however, is not free. You can receive information about and photos of Polish towns (for a fee). There is also an ever-growing list of names of Polish Jews with information about them when available (free). In the search for family and family history, the Czestochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group (CRARG) works on two types of projects: (1) Based on both professional research and volunteer typing, they find, type, and index Holocaust survivor lists and death lists from around Poland - with over 200,000 records so far. (2) Based on daily professional research in Poland, they find, type, and index lists of Jewish residents of Czestochowa, Radomsko, Przedborz, and many nearby towns - with over 300,000 records so far. They restrict access to these pre-Holocaust records to persons who make a financial contribution to CRARG, as described on the "Join" page of their web site. Best wishes on your search! more short essays...
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