Auschwitz 2025

Profile managers: Elaine Martzen [send private message] and Holocaust Project WikiTree [send private message]

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This page is the hub for everything related to the Holocaust Project's effort to add all victims at Auschwitz by January 27, 2025.

Process

1) choose a name within a country, using these linked searches from Yad Vashem, or a different site of your choosing, such as the Dutch Joods Monument or United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. You are welcome to work from your own searches, these are just ideas. Wikitree Bee has a citation function for Yad Vashem, Joods Monument, USHMM, Memorial Book Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany, and Familiendatenbank - Jewish Families in German Reich.

• all results for death location Auschwitz on USHMM (89,478 as of 7 April 2024) (note: a similar search on Yad Vashem will pull about 600,000 records. Please use a birth, surname or some other location to narrow it down, don't want to overtax their servers -Elaine)
• birth place Prague on Yad Vashem (1,202 results as of 12 April 2024)
• birth place Amsterdam on Yad Vashem (29,527 results as of 11 April 2024; probably 25% duplicates)
• birth place Belgium on USHMM (113 results as of 7 Apr 2024
• Roma/Sinti in the Netherlands Joods Monument link

Ideally, mention on this G2G post which surname, region, or results page you are working on.

• see also: Wikitree (Bee) Matched List then click the blue Show Unmatched button near the top. Not all names are added yet.

2) Add the person to Wikitree, and add at least one more source and one family member, if possible. This will help avoid duplicates, and increase the likelihood the person can be quickly connected to the main tree.

• add the category [[Category: Auschwitz - Birkenau Concentration Camp Victims]]
  • adding this category is very important; the other ones below are also very helpful but less essential to completing this project. See this page for other camps, including Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Monowitz
• add the sticker just below the biography header {{Holocaust Sticker|fate=victim}}
• add appropriate categories, such as Jewish Roots, Holocaust Needs More Records, Holocaust Family Tree Size One, etc. Also use the country location if you wish, i.e. Netherlands Needs Birth
• continue adding to the family, or move to another name if you wish. Everyone works differently, do what suits you!

Examples

See: Sample Holocaust Project Profiles

How Many?

The generally-accepted number of people who were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau is around 1.1 million. How many will we be able to add from existing online sources? I estimate 500,000. -Weatherall-96 19:54, 22 April 2024 (UTC) This estimate is based on:

• As of 22 April 2024, Yad Vashem has about 627,000 records for those who died at Auschwitz. They have a duplicate record rate of about 25%, so that's about 470,250 people. (they ask for help in merging the duplicates)
• I think nearly all the Roma/Sinti will be findable, that is 21,000. (this may require access to the book ___ available at a handful of libraries)
• The non-Jewish Poles (75k), Soviet POWs (15k) are among the 67,000 in the Sterbebucher. The 67,000 includes Jews and non-Jews; the Jews are already counted in Yad Vashem. I estimate the Sterbebucher has 40,000 non-Jews. -Weatherall-96 16:57, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

(Many of those who do not yet have records on Yad Vashem, Arolsen Archives, etc are probably small children, for whom people are still searching for records)

470,250 (Yad Vashem) +21,000 (Roma/Sinti from book) +40,000 (Sterbebucher) +132 Jehovah's Witnesses = 531,382 (total Auschwitz victim estimate from existing freely-accessible sources)

Sticker/Templates

See Sample Holocaust Project Profiles for examples to copy/paste from. Other info: Our project adds the {{Holocaust Sticker|fate=victim}} to people from all commonly-cited persecution categories. There is {{Holocaust Sticker|fate=survivor}}, and the option for free-text space, such as {{Holocaust Sticker|fate=victim|was killed in the town of ______}} (useful for death locations where there was no camp, ghetto, large massacre, etc)

also For Soviet POWs, use the camp victim category and POW category, but no sticker. They are findable using this search: soviet pow and camp location. (The typical definition of the Holocaust includes only Jewish victims [about 6 million], then an extended definition includes persecution categories such as Roma/Sinti, Jehovah's witness, etc[~5 million], and the most extensive definition adds Soviet POWs[~2.5-3 million, including 15,000 at Auschwitz]. [Soviet POWs / Categories of prisoners / History / Auschwitz-Birkenau See this space page for links to more info)

Miscellaneous

• use the Auschwitz-Birkenau category unless you have specific information that they died at Auschwitz I ("main camp") or Auschwitz III (Monowitz).
  • answer this G2G post if you need a new camp category created. All the largest one are made, but hundreds of smaller ones don't have a category yet. Auschwitz had about 40 subcamps.^[1][2]
• many websites have photos available - just link to the page, don't copy-paste the photos, please.

Yad Vashem

• Yad Vashem is available on Wikitree Bee- you can use Bee to cite your source, or Add Person. Make sure to access Yad Vashem via this page and not this one. Some parts of the site have this "yvng" appended to the front of the URL, I don't know why, and the citations don't work from there.
• there are occasional translation errors in the relationship to victim field on the pages of testimony- specifically, I have seen "uncle" instead of "nephew". (-Elaine) Make a new G2G post if you need help reading the original language on the handwritten form, use Holocaust, translation, and the language as tags.
• many people have several records available.... might be best to click the tabs Record 1, Record 2, etc and see which one has the most information to cite (i.e., some documents list the parents' names & some don't)
• Yad Vashem has about 7.6 million names in their database, of which they estimate 4.8 million represent individual people. They request help with matching duplicates. If you wish to do so, click the + button on the right of the profile page. You will have to give your name, country, and email address. You'll get a confirmation email, and in a few days you'll get a message like this: "At your request we have connected the name records that you mentioned as relating to: Chaja Broches Person. The numbers of the name records that were connected: 6749645,4885261 Note that this will be visible in our online database only after the next update; the database is updated every three months.
  • now, here is a question I don't know the answer to yet: what will happen to the citation link? Check back on Chaja Person in 3 months, around July 1, 2024. (-Elaine)

Joods Monument, OFB

• These sites are available on Wikitree Bee Preview, here it is at Chrome/Edge and Firefox.

Wayback Machine

• if you want to go the extra mile.... you can include an archived link for webpages using a service such as Internet Archives Wayback Machine, or Ghost Archive.

Languages

• the death field for Auschwitz should be in German or Polish; English is fine, too, just be aware it may be edited later.
  

The drop-down menu (all info imported from FamilySearch) provides:
Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Birkenau, Powiat bialski, Krakau, Polen
Obóz zagłady w Oświęcimiu II, Brzezinka, Powiat bialski, krakowskie, Polska
Even better than the drop-down for the German is:
prior to 18 January 1941:
Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bielitz, Schlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich
after 18 January 1941:
Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bielitz, Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich
(use Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau or Auschwitz-Monowitz, as needed)

• You may wish to use a browser extension for quick language translations, such as chrome link Deepl is also a good option. Of course the translations are not perfect, but are usually close enough. Don't use it for name translations though - for example, on Joods Monument, the surnmame Gans will show up as Swan, so not a proper LNAB.

• See Holocaust Era Language Help Page if you would like to view and add to common genealogical terms in the European languages commonly found in Holocaust research. (I started it but haven't done much on it.... any additions appreciated! Weatherall-96 18:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Israel and Sara as middle names

Please do not put the middle names Israel and Sara in the data field, if you see them in only one document. This name was added by the Nazi regime to many Jews in 1939, see Law on alteration of family and personal names.

Areas completed by birth location

Using Yad Vashem search results.

• Yad Vashem Lichtenstein - 5 profiles - done
• Albania - 5 profiles - done
• Greece: (below-listed towns completed by Mark Lemen)
  • Born in Athens, Attica, Greece (168)
  • Born in Khalkis, Euboea, Greece (10)
  • Born in Patras, Achaea, Greece (19)
  • Born in Piraeus, Attica, Greece (6)
  • Born in Agia Triada, Thessaloniki, Greece (2)
  • Born in Athens, Attica, Greece (168)
  • Born in Kavala, Kavala, Greece (93)
  • Born in Khalkis, Euboea, Greece (10)
  • Born in Komotini, Rhodope, Greece (50)
  • Born in Lagkadas, Thessaloniki, Greece (4)
  • Born in Leoforos, Attica, Greece (6)
  • Born in Patras, Achaea, Greece (19)
  • Born in Piraeus, Attica, Greece (6)
  • Born in Preveza, Preveza, Greece (69)