Prime Minister Ariel Sharon searches the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, where names of his late wife Lily’s family are listed. At his side, Avner Shalev, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate
24 November 2004
More than 750,000 visitors have entered the Yad Vashem website, www.yadvashem.org since the uploading of the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names to the Internet until 12:00 noon today.
Of them, 37% are from Israel, 34% from North America, 25% from Europe, and 4% from the rest of the world. Visitors to the site come from 151 countries.
Available from anywhere in the world at www.yadvashem.org , the Names’ Database, an international undertaking led by Yad Vashem, is an attempt to reconstruct the names and life stories of all the Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The Database currently contains some 3 million names of Shoah victims.
Prior to the uploading of the Database, Yad Vashem’s website generally averaged between 140,000-150,000 visitors per month.
“These numbers illustrate the place of the Shoah in the public consciousness, and the desire of people to remember it and know more about its victims,” said Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev.
“I hope and believe that people will use this unique tool to submit Pages of Testimony for victims whose names are not yet recorded,” he added.
Exploring the Database, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed great personal interest in the project. “Redeeming the names of the victims of the Shoah is a national endeavor of the Jewish people. I call on every Jew, in Israel and abroad, to visit Yad Vashem’s website, to check for names of family members or acquaintances, and to add what is missing,” he said.
