Researchers at Israel’s official memorial to Shoah victims have worked for decades to piece together the identities of millions of Jews killed
November 5, 2025 13:05
Yad Vashem has successfully recovered the names of five million Jewish Holocaust victims, marking a “historic” milestone after decades of work.
The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre has documented the identities of over 80 per cent of the six million Jews killed, with some five million individuals now recorded in its central database of Holocaust Victims’ names – a mammoth archival effort spanning 70 years.
“Behind each name is a life that mattered,” said Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem.
“A child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever.”
An estimated one million names are still unknown, and the organisation said, “many will likely remain so forever”.
However, researchers continue to analyse “hundreds of millions of archival documents” with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and hope to recover a further 250,000 names in the coming years.
The database, accessible to the public through Yad Vashem’s website, has been built using Pages of Testimony – forms intended to record brief life stories of those murdered that are submitted by survivors, remaining family members or friend and that contain the victims’ names, biographical details and, when available, photographs; Holocaust-era documents; and other materials provided by archives and Jewish communities around the world. These include personal letters and diaries; Nazi deportation lists; and demographic data,
Dayan added: “The documentation of five million names is both a tremendous achievement and a reminder of our moral obligation to commemorate every victim so that no one remains anonymous.”
Dr Alexander Avram, who has led the project for nearly 40 years, said: “Most of the victims of the Holocaust were left without graves, without traces – remembered now only through the Pages of Testimony that bear their names.
"By identifying five million names, we are restoring their human identities and ensuring that their memory endures.”
The milestone will be marked at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem tomorrow, with a second event hosted by the Yad Vashem USA Foundation in New York due to take place on Sunday.
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