Do you have an interest in the Holocaust? If so, you might like this project. [closed]

Question

The mission of the Holocaust Project is to reinforce the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust. 

 

If this is a part of history that interests you, please post an "answer" below and we will get you started in the Project. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Holocaust

Comments

Eowyn, is there a project page that would help us know what being involved would ... involve ?  :-)

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I bet there is.  :D

Answer 1

I am interested in the Holocaust and could I get a holocaust project badge also.

Comments

Thanks Linda!

Answer 2

I have been reading about, and the Holocaust since the age of 12. I want to help in anyway I can. It was the most tragic time in history. Please let me help.

Comments

Thanks Debra, we'd love to have you involved.

Answer 3

I would love to. I'm fairly knowledgeable in this area

Comments

Thanks Sarah, that'd be great!

Answer 4

I would like to know how I can do more for the project!

Answer 5

I have recently added a profile for Edith Stein, a Prussian Jew who was a well known philosopher (phenomenologist) and lecturer who later converted & became a Carmelite nun in Cologne, she transferred to Etch, Holland for the safety of her community as well as her own safety but in 1942 was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and gassed together with her sister Rosa and 262 others. Edith was canonised by Pope John-Paul II in 1998.  I am in the process of adding her family most of whom are victims or survivors of the Holocaust. I would like to be able to add the holocaust template to their profiles too.  I have information about other Jewish Catholics who were taken at the same time.  Is it alright to put up profiles for them even if I cannot connect them to anyone else?

Comments

Thank you, Christine. I will see that they get the template.

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You did a beautiful job on Edith Stein., Christine.

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Thanks Maggie, I have more work to do on some of Edith's siblings and have yet to add their families, but will get to it when I can, also some more ancestors.

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Christine,

There are several memorials for Edith in the Netherlands:

• Jewish Memorial Echt
• Triptych Beek
• Monument in Echt
• Stolperstein Edith & Rosa

I am Dutch, and happy to assist in finding Dutch resources and translating Dutch to English.

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Thank you Jan.  I'll put those links on the profile.   Do you by any chance know German?  I have found a census record which could be Arno's wife but I am not sure as I am not able to read the German.

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Yes, I know a bit of German, so I can give it a try. Can you give a link to the document?

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Thank you Jan, This is the link

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MVTL-941

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The document is just a census record with hardly any sigificant data. It lists Martha as daughter of Friedrich (head of housshold) and Marie Kaminskÿ (his spouse), in 1900 residents of a village named Mollenstorf in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin area of Germany.
Marie Kaminskÿ is probably widow of Schluck, as Franz Schluck is listed as step son.

More promising are the ship manifests of the Stein family. Researching them at the Ellis Island site I found two interesting records of a Martha Stein, 1927 and 1932.

The 1927 record has as contact (home)  husband Arno Stein, Michaelisstr 38 in Breslau, and final destination mother Emilie Kamisni, Brookline Mass 119 Westbourne. Also states she was in the USA before, 1923 Boston, and that she was 48 years of age and born in Dresden, Germany.

The 1932 record  also has husband Arno Stein as contact, now living at Mathiasstr. 10 in Breslau. This time her final destination was sister Hedee Rosenblum, 17 Abbort Str Boston Dorchester Mass. Also states she was in the USA before, 1927 Mass, and that she was 53 years of age and born in Dresden, Germany. The destination is the same as that of son Helmut when he traveled in 1934 to his aunt Haidu Rosenblum.

The really fun part is the 1921 passport application of mother Emilie Kaminsky (with photograph on image 219):

"United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV5Y-TT78 : 4 September 2015), Emilie Kaminsky, 1921; citing Passport Application, Massachusetts, United States, source certificate #66109, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925, 1692, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,674,149.

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Thank you so much for those fascinating records Jan. Now I have Martha's birth year I can add her profile, I was hoping to work it out from hints in the books, but this is much better.  Obviously the census was a different family, but thanks for the translation.

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I also found some information on Arno and Martha in this Jahrbuch (Year book). There is a description (starting at page 36) of the family house at Michaelisstraße 38, where they lived in the left (smaller) part with their four children Wolfgang, Eva, Helmut and Lotte. In footnotes on page 37 birth and death years of the family members are given:

• Arno Stein (* 1879 Gleiwitz/OS, † 1948 San Francisco/USA) 
• Martha Kaminsky (* 1879, † 1947 San Francisco/USA)
• Wolfgang (* 1912 Breslau, † 2000 Calif.) 
• Eva (* 1915 Breslau, †1943 Theresienstadt)  
• Helmut (*1916 Breslau, † 1996 Calif.) 
• Lotte (*1917 Breslau).

Just let me know if you would like me to translate parts(!!) of this book.

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Many thanks Jan, great to have the info on the children. I only knew Eva's death year, but not the others, if there is anything more on Eva's arrest etc. I would very much like to have it but I know a few years ago they could not find any record of the exact date.
I took a look at the book, the plan of the house is interesting.  I saw Erika Tworoger mentioned in the footnote on page 39 Does it say that she married?  I am puzzled because in the index of Susanne's book it says Tworoger Erika (later Hannah Cohen) but it doesn't say she married as it does for the others where there is a change of name.  I know she went to train for nursing in a hospital in Jerusalem about 1938, but nothing else for certain after that. I was glad to see her date of death and have added it. I will get to all their children eventually, but have to do some course writing on the Compiegne Martyrs rather urgently, so will come back to this another day.
I think I have quite a lot of the info. about the family house in Edith and Susanne's books, but if there is anything on Arno's house it would be interesting, S. just says they moved into another house.
If there is more on other family members I would be grateful to have it.  It is a  strange feeling to see all that writing and not being able to read it. I am fairly familiar with French and can usually get the gist of Italian & Spanish, but this is so different!
I found Arno's immigration record thanks to you giving me the link.
I have always been interested in the Holocaust, my 3xGt. Grandmother was Jewish so that gives a special connection.  I feel now that I would like to be part of the project, though it will take me a while to get up all this family.  I then have another family to add that were on the same transport as Edith and Rosa.
Thanks for all your help.

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Christine, 

As this is turning out to be a quite lengthy thread, and also mostly off-topic (joining the Holocaust project), I think it is more appropriate to continue this in a e-mail exchange. I will send you a private message to start that.

Just one more contribution here: contrary to the information in the Jahrbuch the official German Archive has on record in their Memorial Book:

Stein, Eva

born on 21^st February 1915 in Breslau / - / Schlesien
resident of Breslau

Deportation:
from Breslau
04^th March 1943, Auschwitz, extermination camp

Answer 6

I would like to join this project, I have added some profiles of people who died in the holocaust and will have some more. I also have several survivors who emigrated.

Comments

Thanks for helping with the profiles, Christine. I added your badge.

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Thank you Maggie

Answer 7

Please don't list as a resource The Levie-Kanes Dutch Genealogical Collection

Levie-Kanes took much of his data from legitimate academic Dutch Jewry research websites without their consent.  Worse, he distorted the names. He invented a fanciful naming scheme that has no basis in legal reality, the person's actual name in life, nor does it conform to any genealogical standard. He calls it a 'Spanish system.' It has nothing to do with German or Dutch patronymic custom. These names he invented by inconsistently inserting father, grandfather, and other pseudo patronymics and matronymics willy-nilly are  extremely confusing to decipher. These invented names are being picked up by others who see them on the site and then put them into their own online trees. For more on this problem See:

http://www.avotaynu.com/nu/V06N01.htm

Better to offer as a resource an actual Dutch Jewry and Holocaust research site: Center for Research on Dutch Jewry in Israel (Akevoth)

www.dutchjewry.org

Answer 8

I am interested in Holocaust and would love to participate in this project if it's still possible

Comments

Hi Ani, what's your profile ID?

Answer 9

After finding my family name in the Nazi records of the holocaust, the holocaust history is now my history. I had no idea we had a biological connection. I want to know and learn as much as I can, especially in Suderland and occupied Czecholsovokia.

Comments

Thanks for your contributions, Jessica.

Answer 10

I'm trying to trace back members of a friend's family who vanished somewhere between 1938 and 1945. There would be a couple of surviving members but I have very little to go by and hope I could maybe get some insight in how to run my research through this group. I have also had a strong personal interest in the Holocaust for well over a decade.

Comments

Youri, are her family's profiles already up here at WikiTree or anyone of the Holocaust Memorial sites ? If you know her parents' names, we may be able to find them as well as the missing members of the family. What were their names and where did they live ?

Answer 11

At this time I'm primarily working on a research regarding the origins and distribution of my surname. The surname Munits/Munitz is relatively uncommon, and therefore I decided that I'll add all the historical Munitz people as I find records about them to WikiTree.

Periodically I come across Holocaust fates of such people. I'd like to mark them when appropriate as Holocaust victims. There are tags for shtetls and for ghettos. However, there was also methodical extermination of Jews all across the Eastern Front in small villages where those Jewish families lived alongside with their Belarusians, Polish, Lithuanians, Latvians, Russian, Ukrainian, etc. neighbours. Consequently, they didn't live in shtetls, they lived in regular villages. Some villages were so small that they only had one or several Jewish families. It doesn't really make sense to create a separate category for every such village. Can I therefore roll them up to the nearest district town, or is there a better way to categorize them?

Comments

I think it's okay to categorize by the village no matter how small. A village may be part of a larger township but for records purposes, exact locations helps pinpoint where family historians find where people were living at certain events in their lifetime. If you need help creating the village categories, I will help you.

If a category specialist feel there is a better way, please join in.

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Patrick, there is a category that was intended to be used for Holocaust victims who died in places other than ghettos and camps.  Please see the Holocaust Victims - Other category.

I have recently been working on profiles of Lithuanian Jews, many of whom were swept up in the methodical exterminations of villages that you are describing.  Your post here triggered me to think that it would probably be good to either add subcategories for these places under the "Other" category or - probably better - to add a new subcategory to Holocaust Victims, possibly called "Holocaust Victims - Village Purges" and add a subcategory structure under it, first country names and, under that, village names.

PS - I have recently encountered the name Munitz while working on members of the Lithuanian Jacobson family who immigrated to South Africa.  I am closely collaborating with Nick Groll and P Copp on this family.  Please check out Munits/Munitz profiles managed by any of us and/or contact me about sharing our information.

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Thanks, Gaile. I like the idea of that sub-category under "Other".

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Gaile Connolly, thank you for your answer. Here's a particular scenario. There was a Jewish ghetto established in February 1942 in Postavy, Belarus [https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%B2_%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%85 Wikitree article in Russian only]. I came across a reference that describes events that took place in early October 1942. A Nazi extermination team drove from Postavy to two small villages [https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Novosolki,+Belarus/@55.2872538,27.0419132,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x46dccd78a3d52677:0x9e02d258a276bfb!8m2!3d55.2874412!4d27.0516857 Novosolki] and [https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Semonovichi,+Belarus/@55.2938135,27.0594278,15.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46dccd7a9f67b64b:0x10912afd9e864586!8m2!3d55.2937192!4d27.0644667 Semonovichi]. These were just two very small villages standing close to each other. In each village lived a single Jewish family along with their neighbours of other fates. Nazis gathered both families, forced them dig their own grave in the nearest forest, and then shot them. I created profiles for one of the families: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Munits-18

These are Holocaust Victims and should be categorized as such. If we are to put them in the "Other" category then they will stand apart from those who were murdered in Postavy (zero profiles at this time), even though same Sonderkommandos were likely responsible. Therefore, I think it makes sense to post them under the district's headquarters. However, I will wait for the opinion and decision of you and other senior contributors before proceeding any further. Thank you!

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Y'know, Maggie, you raise another categorization question.  Thinking more about the "Other" category for Victims made me remember our purpose in adding that one - it was for victims whose death was from causes other than murder (either by direct killing or by the hardships of living in concentration camps).  Thus, it seems that adding towns/villages where entire Jewish populations were systematically murdered under "Other" would create some confusion.

In addition, the list of ghettos and camps is growing very large and I think it might be a good idea to add another hierarchical level there for better organization.  Perhaps what we need is to make a major structure change, inserting some new categories under Victims and grouping the current ones under these.

Here's what I'm thinking (very rough initial thoughts - not even worthy of being called "draft")

• Holocaust Victims
  • Holocaust Victims, Ghettos and Camps​
    • Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland
    • ​(Name of camp, Country)
  • ​Holocaust Victims, Villages
    • ​(Name of Village, Country)
  • ​Holocaust Victims, Other
    • ​(possibly causes of death, possibly no subcategories here)

​We might even want to insert a level under the "Ghettos and Camps" and under "Villages" for country, before listing the lowest level categories (which would contain profiles)

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Patrick, I am well aware of this type of scenario.  I have worked on profiles of a few family branches who lived in Lithuanian villages where what is called "ethnic Lithuanians" persecuted Jews for several years preceding the German occupation during World War II, so that when the Nazis arrived they found most of their work already done and it only took them a few days to march the remaining Jews into the woods, have them dig a pit into which they were piled and systematically kill them all in a matter of a minute or two by machine gun fire.

In addition, there are a number of profiles in the "Holocaust Fate Unknown" category that I have worked on, where there are no records to be found, but it is suspected that the person was one of the exterminated villagers.  HERE is one example.

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I've connected with Nick Groll on Facebook where we are members of the Munitz surname research group. We don't know yet how we're related as DNA shows it's very distant.

Can I please join the Holocaust project so that I can stay updated with project developments? I can't commit much time to the project but I'd like to adhere to the recommended by the project  ways of doing things.

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Patrick, I'm sure that Maggie will give you the project badge very shortly.  She is project leader (I am coordinator and don't have badge-awarding privileges).

Where I came into this is through my second cousin, Dick Orkin (he just died a week ago and I am still in shock over the loss).  He had a DNA match with P Copp's husband and brought me in to work with her to find the relationship.  We narrowed our focus to her husband's relative named Sykes and Dick's relative named Sykes, who married sisters named Jacobson.  We are still trying to determine whether (and how) these two men named Sykes were related to each other.  While building out from the Jacobson sisters who they married, we encountered some profiles already on WikiTree, managed by Nick.  He joined our efforts.  The work I have done here on Munitz/Munits profiles are on the ones he added.  It sounds like, with you joining the three of us, we'll get this family built much more fully ... hopefully leading to identifying all the connections that DNA results are now teasing us about.

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For example, one should be able to get to Auschwitz victims through any of the following breadcrumbs:
Holocaust Victims -> Major ghettos and camps -> Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland -> Holocaust victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
Holocaust Victims -> Poland -> Auschwitz-Birkenau -> Holocaust victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
Holocaust Victims -> Poland -> Oswiencim -> Holocaust victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
Holocaust Victims -> Poland -> Concentration camps -> Holocaust victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

The actual final category "Holocaust victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp" would exist only in one place, but one would be able to find it in any of any of the above routes. I think it's very beneficial who try to navigate their ways around sub-categories.

By the way, those who live in the space of former Soviet Union are not really familiar with the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp name. It is virtually exclusively referred there as Oswiencim concentration camp. Even the corresponding Wikipedia article is called "Oswiencim". Those the Russian people looking for it are actually unlikely to find it because they are not familiar with the "Auschwitz-Birkenau" name.

For the example of murdered Munitz family I provided earlier, I could then use the following category:
"Holocaust Victims in Postavy district". This would be a sub-category to belong to the following greater sub-categories:
Holocaust Victims -> Belarus -> Pastavy -> "Holocaust Victims in Postavy district"
Holocaust Victims -> Soviet Union -> Belarus -> Postavy -> "Holocaust Victims in Postavy district"
Holocaust Victims -> Poland -> Wilno -> Postawy -> "Holocaust Victims in Postavy district" (because it was in Poland prior to start of WWII in 1939).

Does anyone know whether this would technically work? Is this an overkill solution?

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Your thinking is absolutely right, Patrick.  The structural outline I suggested above is only the way the Holocaust project would organize its categories.  The way to accomplish what you are describing is to put each potentially parent category on the page for the low level categories.  For example, the Auschwitz-Berkinau camp is the actual name of the camp, regardless of who would identify it by name, so that would remain as the title for that category.  At the start of that category page, there would be:

[[Category: Holocaust Victims, Ghettos and Camps]]
[[Category: Oswiencim, Poland]] (or whatever the correct Polish spellings of the village and country are)
(possibly other categories)

That way, the category named (probably) "Holocaust Victims, Auschwitz-Birkenau" would be listed as a subcategory on the "Holocaust Victims, Ghettos and Camps" AND ALSO "Oswiencim, Poland" category pages.

This is only for example - we will need to decide on our naming policy for the actual names.  This decision, as well as the structure definition itself, should have input from the categorization project folks in order to mesh properly with the general guidelines for naming and structure of WikiTree categories.   

Answer 12

Hello, I am very interested in this project. My mother was born in Munich in 1932 and I have very little information about her family. I have located one great-great-grandmother who perished in Auschwitz in 1944.  I want to learn so much more.

Answer 13

I would like to join the project. There are several of my husband's family who were victims of the Holocaust, and I am slowly collecting sources and building profiles for them.

Answer 14

I want to join as An former Amsterdammer, Iam working with Jewish profiles and stumbling on some who wher "murdered" in Poland.

Comments

Great, thank you - you've got the badge.