JERUSALEM — Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center announced it has now identified the names of five million Jews murdered during the Holocaust — a moment the institution called “historic” in its ongoing mission to restore the identities of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.
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Yad Vashem said the breakthrough, achieved through decades of global cooperation with survivors, relatives, and researchers, represents both progress and heartbreak. “Reaching five million names is a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Chairman Dani Dayan. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever.”
The memorial center warned that time is running short. Of roughly 200,000 Holocaust survivors still alive today, about half are expected to pass away within seven years. With living testimony fading, Yad Vashem is turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze archival records — tools that may help uncover another 250,000 names, though officials say the remaining million may never be recovered.
The Pages of Testimony project — single-page memorial forms completed by survivors and relatives — has been central to the effort. Written in more than 20 languages, these records have preserved the stories of 2.8 million victims and were recognized by UNESCO’s Memory of the World register in 2013. “The Pages of Testimony are symbolic headstones,” said Dr. Alexander Avram, who has overseen the database for 37 years. “Most of the victims were left without graves or traces — only these pages bear their names.”
To date, Yad Vashem has gathered information from personal diaries, Nazi transport lists, legal documents, and even gravestones and synagogue plaques. Each new name is entered into the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, available online in six languages and powered by algorithms that connect records and locations to reconstruct identities.
Beyond data, the project has reunited families separated for generations, helping descendants rediscover relatives they never knew existed.
Yad Vashem plans to mark the achievement at a seminar in Jerusalem on November 6 and at an event hosted by the Yad Vashem USA Foundation in New York on November 9.
Dayan said the mission continues with urgency: “It is our moral duty to ensure that no victim is forgotten — that not one soul remains in the shadows of anonymity.”
Online data base: https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/search-results-names
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