From: Robert & Sarah Klein To: Multiple recipients of list h-sig Subject: For those of you planning trips to Israel and Yad Vashem Date: Tuesday, June 23, 1998 8:04 AM Overview of Researching at Yad Vashem WHAT YAD VASHEM HAS TO OFFER GENEALOGISTS Yad Vashem currently has four separate facilities with documents that are potentially valuable to people doing genealogical research: 1. The Archives Room 2. The Hall of Names 3. The Library 4. The Picture Archives Room GETTING AROUND YAD VASHEM Yad Vashem is located in west central Jerusalem, not far from the Mt. Herzl cemetery. The easiest way to get there is simply to take a cab. (Any time you take a cab in Israel, *insist* on using the meter.) Cabs in Israel are cheap (10-20 shekels; $2.80-$5.50), and if you take one of the many buses that go to Mt. Herzl, you're left with a 10 minute walk. When you arrive at Yad Vashem, you initially come down a one kilometer stretch of road which begins at Herzl Boulevard and ends with a parking lot. At the end of the lot is the information booth. To the right of the information booth is the building which houses the Archives Room, the Library, and the Picture Archives Room. You walk straight into the building, past an information desk, and enter a small room which has two doors in it. Directly ahead of you is the door of the Archives Room. To the right of this door you see the entrance to the Library, and to the right of the Library door are two copiers. The copier on the right is for public use. It accepts only 10 agurot coins. If you need to make copies and you don't have any 10 agurot coins, simply go back out to the information booth and purchase a copier card for eight shekels which allows you 20 copies. To get to the Hall of Names, take the second path to the left of the outside information booth (and the adjoining gift shop). This path is essentially a continuation of the parking lot. You'll see the mountainside to your left with a great view of the Jerusalem Forest. After about a minute, on your right, you'll come to the entrance of the Historical Museum which has the exhibits on the Holocaust. Stay outside, go past the Museum entrance and go up the stairs with the bathrooms on the right. At the top of the stairs on the right is a door marked "Exit Only". Go in there. (You could go through the Museum, but it's a little confusing.) Bear to the left and go up two flights of stairs (you will already have seen signs for the Hall of Names). At the top of the second flight is the Hall of Names. The phone number of the Yad Vashem switchboard is 02-675-1611. THE ARCHIVES ROOM The Archives Room has many valuable resources, some of which are microfilmed and some of which are collections of papers and actual documents. Most of the files have to be ordered, and orders are only accepted until 2:00 pm (give or take), even though their hours are from 7:00 am - 5:30 pm, S-Th, and 7-1 on Fridays. You can phone in orders if you need to (02-675-1659). There are also some books available for immediate use in the Archives Room. When you enter the Archives Room you actually find yourself in an office. When you want to order material, the worker in this office gives you a sheet to fill out (document id#, your name, and the date). It is also this worker who takes the order once you complete the sheet. After picking up an order form, enter through the door on the left into the actual reading room. There are about a dozen microfilm readers on desks, and books and files on the back wall. (If no one was at the desk in the office, don't fret. Just go into the reading room, get the info I'm about to explain, and give it to one of the researchers who are in the reading room. I usually give my requests to the middle-aged, thinnish man named Valery.) By far and away, the most important resource in the Archives is the ITS Master Index on microfilm. THE ITS MASTER INDEX The International Tracing Service (ITS) of the Red Cross allowed a portion of their work done between 1945 and c.1952 to be transferred to Yad Vashem and microfilmed. There are approximately 16 million index cards recorded on these films. Many of them have information on the same person, some of them survivors, others victims. It is estimated that there are some 7 million different people recorded here. On the back wall, one shelf below eye-level, about 6 feet from the right wall (In that back-right corner there's a computer which Valery sits at usually.), you'll see a large binder (or two) marked "AROLSEN". It should be just below (or occasionally alongside) two large binders marked "MAUTHAUSEN-POLAND" and "MAUTHAUSEN-HUNGARY" (each of these has about 3,000 victims of the camp listed alphabetically). Open up the Arolsen binder and you'll find a list of all the ITS Master Index reels alphabetized by last name. Each reel is designated with a range of last names (with first names included) and the reel's identification number. For example, let's say you want to look up the reel which contains "Reuven Cohen". The list will say something like: "Mindl Cline - Jakub Cottler C-74". In this case you want to write down "Master Index C-74" because Cohen comes between Cline and Cottler, and "Master Index C-74" is the number of the reel. Of course, it may be listed with the Kohns under 'k'. Look up the reel which has Kohn and order it, too. This way, you don't have to put in another order. Depending On Who's Working (DOWW) the day you're there, you can order between 4 and 8 reels at a time. It will take between 2 and 20 minutes for the reels to be delivered, also DOWW. The reels will either be delivered to the desk you choose to sit at, or, DOWW, they will be placed on the table that is in the office on the left hand side. At this point there is a 50-50 chance you will be informed that your reels were in fact delivered, again, DOWW. As is already obvious, "DOWW" is a very important concept for anyone doing research at Yad Vashem. Try not to get frustrated by the inconsistent help you receive at Yad Vashem. Many times the workers are very helpful, but when they're not, try to remember that eventually you will find what you're looking for. The microfilm machines at Yad Vashem are pretty easy to use. Once you have the reel up, you have buttons that allow you to go slow or fast in either direction. Don't be surprised if the reel you ordered is on backwards; it's very common. Just remember you're then searching in reverse alphabetical order. There are all kinds of cards in these reels. As mentioned above, some are of survivors and others are of victims. In addition, some have extensive information including parents' names, mother's maiden name, precise birthdate, precise death date, town of birth, citizenship, last known residence, date of last known residence, dates and places of incarceration, cause of death, and very occasionally, name of enquirer. For some reason the ITS chose not to write the enquirer's name down on these index cards, but on the few that they did, there's usually an address, too. On some of the index cards, there is some sort of index number. I haven't tried it yet myself, but it may be worthwhile mailing the information you have found to the actual ITS in Arolsen, Germany, to see if they don't have more documents pertaining to the cases involved. OTHER GENERAL MICROFILM RESOURCES In addition to the Master Index, there are sets of ITS reels concerning a few individual concentration camps and also for child survivors (some 200,000 children). Since these reels were microfilmed a few years *after* the Master Index was made, they do contain some names which don't appear in the Master Index. Therefore, it's worth perusing the index of the ITS reels in order to request the appropriate reels. Ask one of the workers for the index of all ITS reels (and not the Arolsen index to the Master Index!). This index is a book, maybe a half inch thick, while the index to the Master Index is in a binder which says "AROLSEN" on the side and which is about 3 inches thick. Beyond this, the Archives has most of their indices on computer, and you can simply ask one of the workers to help you find information related to your research. If the search comes up empty, don't assume that the worker tried all possibilities. Always try to think in advance what key words you'd like to search for. There are certain key resources, like the microfilmed Slovak transport lists, which I plan to write about in a separate article. THE HALL OF NAMES The Hall of Names (open from 10:00 am - 4:45 pm, S-Th; 10-1 on Fridays) is a department of Yad Vashem whose task is to gather all the names of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. At some point it was decided that this would be accomplished solely through personal depositions called "witness sheets" filled out by relatives or friends of the deceased. Consequently, many victims recorded in various documents, yizkor books, etc, do not appear in the Hall of Names. Moreover, victims who have no surviving friends or relatives currently have no chance of ever being included in the Hall of Names. It is therefore debatable whether the Hall of Names is fulfilling its mandate to the fullest. Nevertheless, with its 1.5 to 2 million witness sheets, it has made a monumental contribution to preserving the memory of many of the victims. It needs to be noted at this point that the Hall of Names currently has an official policy of not being helpful to those doing genealogical research, and they say as much in one of their explanatory sheets that they pass out to visitors. They recommend using the ITS in Arolsen, Germany, and the Missing Persons Bureau of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. Therefore, do not use the word "genealogy" or any of its derivatives when dealing with the Hall of Names because, DOWW, you may end up getting little or no help when help would otherwise have been forthcoming. THE WITNESS SHEETS The witness sheets are divided into three categories, those handed in prior to 1986, those handed in between 1986 and 1991, and those handed in since 1991. When you get to the reception desk of the Hall of Names, you'll see just over the countertop that there is a computer to your right (with info on pre-1986 witness sheets), a computer in the center (post-1991 depositions), and a third computer to your left (duplicate of first computer). Everything that is post-1991 is fully computerized. You can ask the workers there to search by city, last name, first name,etc, and perhaps most importantly, by witness. About half of the 1986-91 sheets have already been entered into this computer, and it should only take a year or so before all post-1986 sheets will be on-line. Unfortunately, the pre-1986 material is only computerized by last name; it only tells the computer user how many names and their variations are in the microfilm reels of the pre-1986 sheets, but no other information. Occasionally, when a last name has only one or two occurrences, they'll include the first name of the victim/s in question. It is very important to understand that when you do a search at the Hall of Names, three separate searches must be conducted to do a full search. The post-1991 computer needs to be checked, then the pre-1986 microfilms need to be checked. And finally, the actual sheets turned in between 1986 and 1991 have to be hand searched. Since Yad Vashem is in the process of entering in the data from these sheets, they may not be available for searching. The general way to have a search done is to ask the workers to search for specific names. The problem with depending on the workers do the search involving the microfilms is that they are not willing (*understandably*) to check every possibility, or go through hundreds of sheets looking for the needle in the haystack as a dedicated genealogist would do. If you want to scan the microfilms yourself, you need to call up in advance (02-675-1683) and make an appointment to come in at eight in the morning and pay 15 shekels (~$4.00). Or, DOWW, you may be able to persuade a worker to be nice and let you search at whatever hour if there are available machines (which there almost always are). Again, be persistent, confident, and do not mention the word genealogy. The witness sheets themselves are only as accurate and complete as the person who filled it out. In principle, witness sheets contain the following information: Picture of victim, name of victim, names of parents, date of birth, place of birth, regular residence, occupation, nationality, residence during war, place and date of death, marital status, name of spouse, name of children who were also victims, age of those children, place and date of death of those children, the name of the filer of the deposition, their address, their relationship to the victim, and the date and place where the deposition was taken. In addition, many of the sheets have numbers written in either or both of the top corners. While these numbers have no current significance, you can potentially learn from them if the person who filled out the witness sheet filled out more than one and approximately how many more. If there is a number on the left (mispar ha'ishur), then the number will have three components. The right hand number of these three will be a low number. If it's, say 5, that means this is sheet number five out of *at least* 5 sheets. If the number is in the upper right hand corner, you need at least two sheets to compare in order to surmise anything. These numbers are always sequential, so if there's a difference, say the two sheets are numbered 500,000 and 500,004, then you've learned that the same person also filled out sheets for *at least* three more people, namely numbers 500,001/2/and 3. Besides being physically present at Yad Vashem, searches can be requested by mail or over the internet. Just go to www.yad-vashem.org.il/schregjs.htm and follow the directions. However the search is conducted, photocopies can be made of any sheets upon request. There is a small fee of 3 shekels ($0.80). OTHER RESOURCES AT THE HALL OF NAMES For reasons that are unclear, the Hall of Names has a decent collection of yizkor books, mostly photocopied from the Library. This can be helpful if you learn something while visiting the Hall, and you don't want to have to schlep back to the Library which is a couple of minutes away. What is more significant, and I don't understand why these are not in either the Library or the Archives Room, is that the room behind the desk has, in addition to the yizkor books and a few other things found in the Library, a collection of lists of olim societies formed in Israel in the late 40's and early 50's. Some regions and towns have rather extensive lists, and some of the lists have detailed information in them, so be sure to ask about whatever town/s you are researching. Please note that some (most?) of the workers are not aware of the existence of these folders. They are on the left wall of the back room on the upper shelves. They are alphabetized by geographical region, so request country, city, and county to make sure that you find anything they might have which is relevant to your genealogy (just don't mention "the 'g' word" when you make your request). THE LIBRARY The Library is open from 7:00 am - 5:30 pm, S-Th; 7-1 on Fridays. They have over a thousand yizkor books, but be warned that many of them have very limited genealogical information. On the other hand, there are other books in the library which have excellent lists but aren't classified as yizkor books (e.g. there's a book on the partisans with over 200 names, each one with a whole paragraph of info). The only answer is browse, browse, browse. Unfortunately, due to theft of yizkor books (how sad!), they just put all the yizkor books under lock, so you can't browse them per se, though you can look through their hard copy lists or computer database and order what you like. In any case, it's always been that the majority of material is not out on the shelves and has to be ordered. They're pretty good about getting orders done quickly, but you have to get them in before 3:00pm. You can of course call in advance if necessary (02-675-1664) to place an order. There is much to discover in the library, and all I can do is share some of the key resources that I've come across in my own research. When you enter the library, immediately on your right is a computer for public use. The menu is somewhat confusing but basically comprehensible. Ask a librarian to help you search if you're having trouble. I find that they understand the relatively antiquated system rather well. All the stacks are on the right side of the room. In the second and third rows are a number of books of survivors and victims by both country and camp. These books can be crucial when doing research. Get to know them. Ask a librarian or search the computer for specific regions and camps. A number of such resources are not on the shelves and have to be ordered. As you pass the librarian's desk you see the first of a series of tables divided in two by a bookshelf. This first table usually has sitting on it two excellent references. One is Nevek, a list of victims of the Hungarian Labor Battalions which has quite detailed information in it, including mother's first and maiden name, date and place of birth, last known residence and date of death. The other reference always out on this table is the Death Books of Auschwitz. This book in three volumes has some 69,000 victims listed alphabetically (there's a short supplementary section at the back of volume 3), and which supplies date and place of birth, date of death, and prisoner id number. If you send specific information from this book to the Auschwitz Archives in Poland, they'll send you back more detailed info including parents' names and their residence, exact time of death, and "cause" of death. Make sure to ask about the "Pinkas Kehillot" ("Notebook of Communities") for your region of study. They contain good general information on many towns and villages from all over Europe. Some are still be written (such as Slovakia), and are supposed to come out shortly. I plan to write about other specific resources in future articles, but remember that the best policy in the library is to browse the shelves and search by computer. PICTURE ARCHIVES ROOM This archive does not hold much promise genealogically, but it's worth checking when other resources have been exhausted. When you come into the building which houses the Archives and Library, turn right immediately after the information desk and walk all the way to the end, past the staircase on the left, to the very end of the hallway. In the far left corner is a door, the entrance to the Picture Archives Room. Ask one of the assistants to help you search their computers for pictures from your region and even for specific names (if you're extremely lucky). Apart from the nostalgic aspect of seeing photos and drawings of synagogues, cemeteries, and streets from various towns, once in a while you come across a photo of a memorial plaque. Here's where you can get solid information. And you never know when you'll luck out with a close-up of the grave of a relative. You may request copies of any picture you like, at a cost of around 25 shekels (~$7.00) per copy. FURTHER INFORMATION For further information, please feel free to contact me, Robert Klein, at: hamoreh@netvision.net.il This Hungarian Special Interest Group (H-sig@mail.jewishgen.org) is hosted by JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy Visit our home page at http://www.jewishgen.org If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE send email to: listserv@mail.jewishgen.org unsubscribe H-sig