Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints
Auschwitz is universally recognized as the ultimate symbol of evil the worlds largest death factory. It is estimated that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered there, of whom a million were Jews. From a single camp in 1940, Auschwitz was transformed into a massive complex, including 3 main camps and 40 sub-camps. The establishment of the Auschwitz complex was a project that lasted years, and was never completed. In the course of the planning phase, SS draftsmen prepared hundreds of drawings and plans of the construction sites and the various buildings. These included detailed drawings of the gas chambers and the crematoria.
Over 4 million names in Central Database of Shoah Victims
The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names is a unique international undertaking led by Yad Vashem. It is the endeavor to recover the names and reconstruct the life stories of each individual Jew murdered in the Shoah. It is our moral duty to respect their last behest and remember them. We estimate that the number of Jews commemorated in the database to date is 4 million. The database is comprised of Pages of Testimony, historical documentation and additional sources.
Millions of names that appear in historical documents have not yet been identified or recorded in the database; many additional names still linger in the memories of survivors or in their family folklore. Building the database is a work in progress.
The Names’ Database enables visitors to search for the names of any of the over 4 million Shoah victims recorded to date. In addition, it allows users to submit new Pages of Testimony – special forms containing biographical details of individual victims – for those victims as yet unrecorded. About half of the names in the Database were obtained from the more than 2.5 million Pages of Testimony submitted to Yad Vashem over the past 50 years, nearly all of which have now been digitized. Other names have been gleaned from additional computerized lists, including deportation, camp and ghetto records.
