Yad Vashem to receive directory of Nazi-era German Jews

Directory includes names and addresses, information on emigration, detention and deportation, and the place and time of deaths.

By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
Yad Vashem 88 (photo credit: )
Yad Vashem 88
(photo credit: )
Yad Vashem will receive on Thursday an official list of the estimated 600,000 Jews who lived in Germany under Nazi rule. Four years in the making, the "Directory of Jewish Residents in Germany 1933-1945" includes German Jews' names and addresses, information on emigration, detention and deportation, and even the place and time of their deaths. The directory was produced by the official German Federal Archives by collating 2.5 million records from more than a thousand sources. Half the Jewish community in Germany had fled the country by 1939, but were overtaken by Nazi armies invading the European countries to which they had fled. Only 20,000 Jews lived in Germany by the war's end, many of them refugees in displaced persons camps. The project was funded by the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation, established in 2000 by the German government and industry to compensate forced laborers from the Nazi era. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann and foundation chairman Dr. Martin Salm will present the list to Yad Vashem director Avner Shalev in the Holocaust memorial's Hall of Names. "This list is more than just a list of names or a residents' directory," said Salm. "It is a memorial to those murdered and those forced into exile. The shame for the crimes committed by the Germans is mixed with grief for the loss that Germany inflicted upon itself. "The murderers wanted to eradicate the Jewish people and Jewish identity. They did not succeed. The Yad Vashem memorial site calls out to us: 'Look - we are alive,'" he said. The list has not been released to the public because of German privacy laws. It will also be given to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, and the Claims Conference.