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Holocaust Remembrance

Leslie Ryan
Star of David & candle for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day https://jfnnj.org/events/yom-hashoah-2/

Monday, January 27, was Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day around the world. Six million European Jews and 11 million others including Slavs, "Gypsies," disabled people, Catholics, political enemies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals were killed by the Nazi Regime.


This week I learned that the interned had identifying badges besides the Star of David to indicate why they had been imprisoned. This image shows the system used at Dachau from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website (link below):

Identifying badges on prison camp internee uniforms showing their "crime" https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps

"Criminals were marked with green inverted triangles, political prisoners with red, "asocials" (including Roma, View this term in the glossary nonconformists, vagrants, and other groups) with black or—in the case of Roma in some camps—brown triangles. Gay men and men accused of homosexuality were identified with pink triangles. And Jehovah's Witnesses were identified with purple ones. Non-German prisoners were identified by the first letter of the German name for their home country, which was sewn onto their badge. The two triangles forming the Jewish star badge would both be yellow unless the Jewish prisoner was included in one of the other prisoner categories. A Jewish political prisoner, for example, would be identified with a yellow triangle beneath a red triangle."


According to the Associated Press there are still about 245,000 survivors of the Nazi atrocities, some 80 years later. Most of them are "child survivors" meaning they were born after 1928, their median age is 86.


These children were separated from their families when they arrived in the internment/concentration camps, and many of them and their descendants are still trying to learn what happened to their siblings and cousins. You may have seen some of the news stories about how DNA testing is enabling some reunions.


There is not ONE definitive list of victims yet. There are several resources for searching for Holocaust victims and their families that are free to use:


The most famous and largest resource is Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Museum, in Jerusalem.


US Holocaust Memorial Museum


Ancestry (Yes! Free Search!)


JewishGen Database


The New York Public Library has SEVERAL great sites to research



There may be museums near you that you could visit to learn more. Here is a list at Wikipedia:


little girl with snowman

What discoveries have you made during this, what seems to be the eternally long month of January? I may have found a crack in one of my brick walls! More squinting at Irish records is required.


Let me know if I can help you or answer a question!


Leslie Ryan



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