A Page of Testimony is a form issued by

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

(יד ושם) that asks for information about a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

victim of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

. Over 4.3 million Pages of Testimony have been submitted to Yad Vashem, beginning in the 1950s. Most of these, as well as other forms of documentation of

Holocaust victims Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulte ...

, are searchable and viewable online through Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names. Pages of Testimony can be submitted online, or downloaded, printed, and mailed to Yad Vashem. Downloadable forms are available in English, Hebrew, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, and Dutch. Though many Pages of Testimony are submitted by relatives of the victims, anyone can submit a Page of Testimony about any victim. Through its Names Recovery Project, Yad Vashem actively solicits help collecting new Pages of Testimony, and provides resources for community outreach. Details provided on Pages of Testimony vary, but can include genealogical, residential, occupational, and wartime information about the victims. Submitters are named and their relationships to the victims, contact information (on the date of submission), and wartime status are sometimes recorded.

Genealogical use

Because of the extensive genealogical information often included on Pages of Testimony, the fact that the submitters were often related to the victims, and the large number of Pages of Testimony that have been collected, the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names is frequently used by Jewish genealogists and others searching for ''living'' relatives. As recently as 2006, siblings separated since

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

found each other through Page of Testimony research. However, Yad Vashem's purpose in collecting Pages of Testimony is not genealogical, but commemorative. A

non-commercial A non-commercial (also spelled noncommercial) activity is an activity that does not, in some sense, involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis. For example, advertising-free community ...

website unaffiliated with Yad Vashem, ShoahConnect.org, facilitates such Page of Testimony research by enabling email addresses to be associated with Pages of Testimony, and matching people associated with the same Pages.

References

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External links

Page of Testimony from American Society Yad VashemThe Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project
at Yad Vashem website Holocaust historiography Legal documents Vital statistics (government records) Yad Vashem Jewish genealogy