Yad Vashem holocaust photo archive made available online.

January 26, 2011 10:29 AM

A large chunk of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive has been made available online. The first batch consists of 130,000 photographs and more will follow. The photos and their keywords are indexed and searchable via Google. Readers can contribute to the archive project by adding stories, comments and further documents linked to the photos. Photos range from the horrific to the charmingly mundane.

Yad Vashem is the is Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (wikipedia).

via The Guardian

Previously on Metafilter.

posted by jonesor (11 comments total)

Thanks for posting this.
posted by zarq at 10:31 AM on January 26, 2011

Not glad to see this but grateful for this post. Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust museum are both almost unbearable and yet should be experienced.
posted by bearwife at 10:45 AM on January 26, 2011

I was there at Christmas. Yad Vashem is indeed an intense experience. About as unflinching and inescapable as history gets
posted by Philosopher's Beard at 11:03 AM on January 26, 2011

Every time something like this comes up I spend hours hunting for any trace of the cousins not heard from after the war, and the people and places they (and the family who came to the US and thus survived) must have known. I guess it's how I keep their memory alive, though all I know is a little of who they looked like and I've yet to find them outside of family interviews.

Thanks for posting this.
posted by SMPA at 1:01 PM on January 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I just looked up my family's hometown in the old country, was transfixed, horrified, amazed, and moved to tears all at once.
posted by Stoatfarm at 1:03 PM on January 26, 2011

Stoatfarm, me too. I was hoping for the "charmingly mundane" type of photo, but got "horrific."
posted by catlet at 1:28 PM on January 26, 2011

Tip: if you're looking up a town that used to be in Poland but is now in Ukraine, use the old Polish spelling instead -- i.e. Lwow instead of Lviv, Nadworna instead of Nadvornaya, etc.
posted by Asparagirl at 1:52 PM on January 26, 2011

...and if you don't know the old spelling (or new name, or location, or whatever) for your ancestors' hometown, this free tool should help you find it.
posted by Asparagirl at 1:55 PM on January 26, 2011 [4 favorites]

Is the archive searchable? I can't see how to do it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:49 PM on January 26, 2011

Joe in Australia: "Is the archive searchable? I can't see how to do it."

It may be easier than this, but this is how I did a search:

On the right side of the page, there is a Google search box. Search for anything. When the next page (most likely blank) comes up, click "Advanced."

As an example, I then did a search for "Lodz" in the box labeled Places. Here were the results.
posted by zarq at 2:57 PM on January 26, 2011

Thanks, Asparagirl - I knew about three or four of those spellings, but had no idea about the rest (my family's town has a, to me quite impressive, count of thirteen variations.)
posted by SMPA at 4:31 PM on January 26, 2011