Yad Vashem gets Red Army lists from Holocaust

Hundreds of thousands of victims' names had been in Soviet archives.

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
Hundreds of thousands of names of Jewish victims of the Holocaust are likely to be found in thousands of newly uncovered Russian army lists from World War II which have been brought to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Remembrance Authority said Thursday. The lists, which had been stored in the official archives of the former Soviet Union and are now accessible to the public with English translation free of charge on Yad Vashem's Web site, are among 11,000 Holocaust-related lists in 20 languages uncovered in various archives throughout Europe over the last few years. "Now for the first time people who are looking for their relatives who were killed in the former Soviet Union during the Holocaust have a good chance of finding their names on these lists," said Dr. Ya'acov Lozowick, archive director at Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem has compiled a list of 3 million of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis on its Web site database. Lozowick added that the newly uncovered lists could also be helpful for those tracking down Nazi war criminals and their accomplices. The newly-found lists include one detailing the distribution of matza to the doomed Jews of Poland by the Joint Distribution Committee as late as 1942.