Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Digital Memorial Site: Yad Vashem opened its Holocaust archives

Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is not only the unsurpassing memorial to the Nazi mass murder of the Jewish people, it is also a growing memory archive. Powered by Google is now its archives digitally accessible - and allows glimpses of frightening intensity. Tel Aviv / Hamburg - One source, two photos that could not be more different: in the first, one of four young women and girls posing for the camera.

If possible, grow up a little too seriously. In the second picture a starving baby is dying on a sidewalk. A couple of teenagers walk by, see only half way: It is clear that the scene is one of their terrible normality. Between the images are a few years - and six million deaths, which were operated by the German Nazi regime systematically and industrially organized.

Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is the most important memorial to this mass murder, the archives of the local collection is famous and is growing steadily: it gathers and displays pictures of supposed better days, of a European Jewish life world from the catastrophe that we in Israel Holocaust, in many other countries, called the Holocaust.

It gathers evidence and testimony before the show normality, during and after the Shoah - and shakes the very reason that it is in addition to the absolute horror of the murder, the bittersweet memories of the time before. So white and the visitors to the online photo archive, which the Yad Vashem now digitized with the help of US-based Google and public did not know what to expect when you click in the picture galleries: scenes of farming and family life in Lodz, Prime Stasi with photo evidence of the mass graves of a concentration camp, memories of a German soldier, the starving children photographed - or snapshots of mass shootings.

Not a static document, but collective memory, the operator of the famous archives have put together with Google in a first step, 138 327 high resolution photos online. For those who are dealing with the Holocaust, is an invaluable source becomes available. Users will in future also add even their own stories, told Yad Vashem and Google on Wednesday.

"We focus on finding new innovative ways to make the enormous amount of data in our archives for a global audience to access and searchable," said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem. Also difficult to locate documents to the new Internet site are now searchable. For the digitization, Google has used an optical character recognition technology.

"We see digital as a great opportunity to share and disseminate important materials which are preserved in archives," said Yossi Matias, director of Google's research and development center in Israel. The Yad Vashem Holocaust archive was founded in 1953 in Jerusalem and is considered the most important memorial to the persecution and murder of Jews during the Nazi era.

From the partnership with Google is hoping the archive to address worldwide via the Internet to new audiences and more young people. Two years ago, already has its own YouTube channel with videos and reports of Holocaust survivors has been posted online.

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