International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 65 years ago today, the Soviet Army liberated the Jewish prisoners who remained at Auschwitz-Berkenau which combined were the largest of the Holocaust death camps.

A CBS news story gives details of the elderly survivors who revisited the camps today. That story said "By the end of World War II, at least 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Gypsies and others, had died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Some 6 million Jews overall were killed in the Holocaust." This makes me shudder. I grew up in a St. Paul neighborhood that was home to many Jewish families. One of my high school and college jobs was in a clothing store owned by a Jewish family. Today, my interest in family history makes me wonder how many of those friends and neighbors suffered the loss of family members in the horrific camps.

I read another news story today -- about the desecration of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in France. How sad at anytime, but today it seems especially cruel.

New Digital Holocaust Collection free through October

This press release just arrived from the U.S. National Archives.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 29, 2009

National Archives and Footnote.com Announce New Digital Holocaust Collection

Collection includes Holocaust-related photos and records available online for first time

Washington DC and Lindon, UT -September 29, 2009 The National Archives and Records Administration and Footnote.com today announced the release of the internet's largest Interactive Holocaust Collection. For the first time ever, over one million Holocaust-related records - including millions of names and 26,000 photos from the National Archives- will be available online. The collection can be viewed at: http://www.footnote.com/holocaust

"We cannot afford to forget this period in our history," said Dr. Michael Kurtz, Assistant Archivist of the United States and author of America and the Return of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe's Cultural Treasures. "Working with Footnote, these records will become more widely accessible, and will help people now and in the future learn more about the events and impact of the Holocaust."

Included among the National Archives records available online at Footnote.com are:

• Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz, and Flossenburg

• The "Ardelia Hall Collection" of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art

• Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps

• Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings

Access to the collection will be available for free on Footnote.com through the month of October.

The collection also includes nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The project incorporates social networking tools that enable visitors to search for names and add photos, comments and stories, share their insights, and create pages to highlight their discoveries. There will be no charge to access and contribute to these personal pages.

"These pages tell a personal story that is not included in the history text books," said Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. "They give visitors a first-hand glimpse into the tragic events of the Holocaust and allow users to engage with content such as maps, photos, timelines and personal accounts of victims and survivors through over 1 million documents."

So that visitors may more easily access and engage the content, Footnote.com has created a special Holocaust site featuring:

• Stories of Holocaust victims and survivors

• Place where visitors can create their own pages to memorialize their Holocaust ancestors

• Pages on the concentration camps - includes descriptions, photos, maps, timelines and accounts from those who survived the camps

• Descriptions and samples of the original records from the National Archives

The Holocaust collection is the latest in a continuing partnership between Footnote.com and the National Archives to scan, digitize, and make historical records available online. The goal is to give more people access to these and other historical records that have previously only been available through the research room of the National Archives. This partnership brings these priceless resources to an even greater number of people and enables the National Archives to provide ever-greater access to these critical holdings.

About Footnote, Inc.
Footnote.com is a subscription website that features searchable original documents, providing users with an unaltered view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

About the U.S. National Archives
The National Archives alone is the archives of the Government of the United States, responsible for safeguarding records of all three branches of the Federal Government. The records held by the National Archives belong to the public - and it is the mission of the National Archives to ensure the public can discover, use, and learn from the records of their government.

A link to more on this literary charade

http://www.parlezmoipress.com/mermaid/parlezmoiblog.html

A comment on the fabricated holocaust story from a Belgium nationalist descendant

A colleague of mine, Barbara Mathews from Massachusetts granted me permission to post the following comment. She had posted this on a online discussion list and I thought it was an excellent follow-up to the revelations in this morning's Boston Globe story. Barbara is a descendant of a Belgium nationalist family. Thank you for this insiteful posting and for sharing it.

"This story really hit home for me. My father's uncle Charles Pons [Dad's name was Charles Pons Mathews] was killed as a nationalist by the Nazis in Belgium, as was Misha's father. My father's cousin Marcel survived a concentration camp. Both met their fates because of nationalism. But the rest of the family survived. Aunt Julia and little Albert were never arrested.This makes my family's experience completely different from that of Jewish families. All members of Jewish families died. All of them. That's what makes it genocide and not war.I am not happy that Misha takes the experience of a nationalist family and abuses the holocaust experience of the Jews to give herself credibility or sympathy or whatever. It makes me angry. And I'm saying that as a person whose Belgium family had an experience in World War II similar to that of Misha's family. That's no way to bear witness to the holocaust. Misha's actions are an abuse.Had to get that off my chest. Please don't think that all Belgium nationalist families would react the way Misha did. She shames us."

Fellow genealogist uncovers the truth about a holocaust story

Early this morning I received an email from a friend, Sharon Sergeant, who lives in Massachusetts. I met Sharon eight years ago at an NGS conference in Providence, Rhode Island, through her cousin, my friend Eileen Polakoff, who lives in Manhattan. Both are fellow professional genealogists. Sharon always seems to be working on interesting projects. She sent a link to today's Boston Globe. This articles tells about Sharon uncovering the evidence that shows an author's published memoir of the holocaust and the aftermath was not exactly true.

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/02/29/author_admits_making_up_memoir_of_surviving_holocaust/