Holocaust Project - Auschwitz 2025

Question

Bring your questions for the YouTube Q&A 12pm (Eastern USA time), Wednesday May 8th.

There is no single list of victims of Nazi persecution..... yet. The Holocaust Project is changing that. Like Wikitree's front page says, you can be a part of something big. No prior experience needed, just jump in.

The Holocaust Project invites you to help us add all victims at Auschwitz (Jews and non-Jews); our goal is to have all documented victims added by January 27, 2025. This is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. You can help by adding profiles from these sites; example searches are linked on the Auschwitz 2025 page: (use Wikitree Bee to easily Add Person/cite source for all but the last site listed)

*Joods Monument (the Dutch online memorial, in Dutch & English)

*Yad Vashem

*United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM - Auschwitz search)

*Memorial Book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945

*Jewish Families in German Reich

*Memorial de la Shoah (In French. Cannot search by death location but has a wealth of information)

*any similar site of your choosing.

If you prefer working from spreadsheets, we have one on Google Sheets: Auschwitz Death Books/Sterbebücher. This document has about 65,000 people with birth/death dates, places of birth, and religion. 

Please try to add at least one more source and family member. But it’s alright if you cannot- each profile is a planted seed that will grow a tree.

Please use the Auschwitz-Birkenau category, unless you are sure that the person died at Auschwitz I (aka main camp) or Auschwitz III (Monowitz)

It would be helpful if you mention on this post what surname or location you are focused on. Please add an "answer" instead of a "comment" - comments will be deleted after being read once, and I'll send you a PM to make sure your comment is addressed. (edit, added all comments into one "answer" on 10 May)

You do not need to join the Holocaust Project to participate, any WikiTreer is welcome.

Any general questions, ask here! And if you need a new category for a Holocaust-related location (a ghetto, subcamp, etc) post at this G2G link.

Sandy Patak & I will co-host a YouTube presentation on Wednesday May 8th, 12pm Eastern (USA) time to review what we’ve accomplished so far and answer any questions. 

Thank you for participating in this important and historic endeavor.

(Citation link for first sentence -no complete list of victims)

Links from Azure Robinson:

P.S. Share the , spread the word!

• Facebook: Link
• Twitter: Link
• LinkedIn: Link
• Mastodon: Link
• Instagram: Link
• YouTube: Link

Answer 1

I added my first family - parents and 3 children.  I think I will add from the spreadsheet going forward.

Comments

Sounds good, thank you so much!

Answer 2

I would like to help. I can add Italian profiles.

Comments

Wonderful, thank you! You may like this site - it's supported by Wikitree BEE extension (for using the Add Person feature & source citation).  CDEC digital library.

Answer 3

I will add some victims that have lived in my home town Oberhausen, Northrheinwestfalia, Germany.

Bettina

Comments

Great, thanks so much, Bettina!

Answer 4

Just realized there are a many profiles with Death Place is set to Auschwitz - Birkenau, but without the category. Is it possible to use WikiTree+ to extract a list with these profiles (and for similar concentration camps)?

Comments

I think so, but I need to find out from someone more knowledgeable than me about the searches... need to construct a command involving "without" a category. I have one or 2 people I can ask, and if they don't know I'll post a separate q on G2G.

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If you word-find dombrowken on this page https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:WikiTree_Plus , that goes to the sql Categories section. Might be something in there that will lead to the answer.

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There may be a better way... but this works DeathLocation=Auschwitz not CategoryFull=Auschwitz_-_Birkenau_Concentration_Camp_Victims

https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=DeathLocation%3DAuschwitz+not+CategoryFull%3DAuschwitz_-_Birkenau_Concentration_Camp_Victims&MaxProfiles=500&Format=

Answer 5

I am sorry for the inconvenience, the top comment area was getting a bit long, so I made a screenshot and am placing it here. I am also editing the main post to address some of the items recorded here. (editing to add the image in a minute here, I can't get it to embed properly. Edit: I still can't get the image to embed. I have made a webpage archive and am copy-pasting the text instead, in 2 sections bc G2G permits a maximum of 12,000 charcters) https://web.archive.org/web/20240510231619/https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1732925/holocaust-project-auschwitz-2025?start=0#a_list_title

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Please note that in the death location field, the proper description between 1941 and 1945 should be "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Kreis Bielitz, Provinz Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich" or short "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Bielitz, Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich". That's the consensus of the Germany Project's twice-monthly meeting of 24 April 2024, i.e. yesterday.

commented Apr 25 by Oliver Stegen G2G6 Pilot

Best way to achieve this is to have editbot update all death locations containing Auschwitz OR Oświęcim to the prescribed one. And have editbot repeat that operation with some fixed time interval.

commented Apr 25 by Sjaak Spijkermans G2G6 Mach 1

How do you program editbot to do that? Or is there an application process for this?

But then, the death location string is only valid from 1941 to 1945. Before it is different (Schlesien instead of Oberschlesien) and afterwards it's different again (Polish nomenclature). So, can editbot do that depending on the death date?

commented Apr 25 by Oliver Stegen G2G6 Pilot

 

Comments

I’m pretty sure EditBot can’t do location fields. Oliver- you can repost this comment as an answer, so this area doesn’t get full. Also, the info you provided is now on the Auschwitz 2025 space page, both in the body and in the comment section. Thanks!

commented Apr 25 by Elaine Martzen G2G6 Pilot

You would have to ask Ales to do it

commented Apr 25 by Sjaak Spijkermans G2G6 Mach 1

P.S. Share the , spread the word!

• Facebook: Link
• Twitter: Link
• LinkedIn: Link
• Mastodon: Link
• Instagram: Link
• YouTube: Link

commented Apr 25 by Azure Robinson G2G6 Pilot

Another way to find people who were in Auschwitz is to follow @AuschwitzMuseum (Caps or not may differ) on Social Media. They post every day about a person that was born OTD and about their fate.

commented 5 days ago by Jelena Eckstädt G2G Astronaut

Potential sources you might want to add: Database Jews in the German Reich and Memorial Book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945

commented 4 days ago by Florian Straub G2G6 Pilot

I do think this initiative is very good however I would hope that people pay more attention to adding those profiles to Wikitree. Some of those profiles are very bad sourced and do not have any connection to the big tree at all. This means a lot of extra work for the Netherlands project or at least for people that are working on connecting, sourcing and cleaning up all the profiles in the Netherlands.

commented 1 hour ago by Margreet Beers G2G6 Pilot
edited 1 hour ago by Margreet Beers

Understood. We have some new members who are learning Wikitree as they go, as well. The instructions indicate there should be at least one more source, other than Joods Monument, etc, and one more relative. Many people are adding family groups of 20 or so, and I'm sure they will connect up to the big tree soon. This is easy to do with Dutch records, less easy for some other countries. Please let me know privately if there are any particular profiles you are concerned about... other than the ones I made late last night, I'm fixing them up right now!  You can re-add your comment as an "answer" if you wish; I'm afraid I need to "tidy-up" this top section as it's getting a bit lengthy. I will edit my post above to emphasize needing to add another source.

commented 15 minutes ago by Elaine Martzen G2G6 Pilot

Answer 6

I can't assist in this project right now but I would like to thank all of the volunteers who are working on it.

While I'm not Jewish, and to my knowledge no relatives were Holocaust victims, my birth surname (Wolff) seems to be shared by a great number of Jewish people in and around Germany. So I seem to get daily notifications about Wolffs who died between 1940 and 1945 and who are included in your project.

A person can be aware of the Holocaust, can be sympathetic and saddened by it, but I've come to realize that the scope and the humanity of that atrocity can be missed without a personal connection. Getting that daily reminder of how many Wolffs alone were murdered this way really makes it personal for me.

This is such important work you are doing. Thank you all, so much.

Comments

Thanks so much Darlene! Very much appreciate your sentiment and note.

Answer 7

Finally answering this post "officially" - I have been working on a list of children who lived at 72 rue Claude-Decaen in Paris (see the plaque). I intend to add any person living at this address in 1936 (when there was a census) who was deported. I've also been working on the Widerman family (Robert Clary's relatives). I intend to focus on adding small groups of Parisian Jews. 

I also do some maintenance work as we a creating categories for French transports.

Comments

Wonderful, very much appreciated, Isabelle!

Answer 8

Just a quick reminder as I am correcting some entries (not too many, but just be aware in the future): 

The death location for these individual should look something like this (autofill): Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Oświęcim, Biała County, Kraków, Poland

Unfortunately there is an incorrect autofill which should not be used: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Oświęcim, Ostrzeszów, Poznańskie, Polska.

These are two entirely different locations ... the one in Ostrzeszow is incorrect (this location is in Wielkopolskie Voivodeship)  

(I only found these because I just finished categorizing in Ostrzeszow Powiat).  Skye, Poland Project

Comments

We are trying not to use English, just German or Polish. So is there a correct Polish in the drop-down, or not?

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You are correct with your assessment above for it to be in German:

Please note that in the death location field, the proper description between 1941 and 1945 should be "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Kreis Bielitz, Provinz Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich" or short "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Bielitz, Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich". That's the consensus of the Germany Project's twice-monthly meeting of 24 April 2024, i.e. yesterday.

There is not even an option for Auschwitz in Polish, just the nearby city of Oświęcim (which shouldn't be used).  

I mention the above because it is in the drop down menu and many people are not familiar with locations (if it is correct or not).

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As of the morning of 5/24 PDT, when I start to type "Konzentrationslager Auschwitz" the autocomplete field jumps to "Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Oscwiecim, Biala County, Krakow, Poland," with no other options. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is there a way to get the desired German name in the autocomplete? Or does one have to copy/paste the whole desired name every time? Thanks.

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You'll have to copy/paste the desired name each time unfortunately.  I believe the autofill is derived from FamilySearch somehow.  The only way to fix is to fix it within FamilySearch.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  

If you use Chrome, add the extension "Chrome Notepad" and pin it to your extensions.  It's a wonderful little tool at your fingertips where you can add this information and copy/paste it from there each time it is needed.

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WBE also has a clipboard feature.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_BEE#Clipboard_and_Notes

I think there is also a frequently used location feature on it, trying to find it, I'll post back here.

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Here it is, "My Places" is on the Bee Extension. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_BEE#My_Places  and here is a 2-minute help video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOy8F5WtWmY

Personally, I've just been copy-pasting, but I'll also try out these features I mentioned. But don't worry about it too much - no need to go back and "fix" things, just be aware it might edited it later. I'm not too worried about relatively minor location issues, as long as it's "close enough" and we can find the profile, great.