THE LITHUANIAN HOLOCAUST NAMES PROJECT

This project started as a result of a number of visits to Lithuania with visits to numerous mass murder sites. The main aim was to research the names of the victims of the Lithuanian Shoah.

Preliminary enquiries were made in Lithuania, Israel and the USA. A pilot study of unpublished material in the archives of Yad Vashem showed that various types of lists were available. These lists were drawn from numerous sources. The information on these lists differs extensively. One list may have just a name and another, pertinent information relating to the victim. Following the pilot study, and after consulting with Holocaust researchers, it was clear that no substantive record exists of the names and details of Lithuanian Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. In many western European countries substantial almost complete records of deportations and transports exist. For most of eastern Europe and former Soviet Union it is very rare to find execution or deportation records.

The primary aim of this project was to locate the maximum number of lists of names and information relating to the Jewish men women and children murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania, and to publish a Memorial Book to remember the victims for generations to come. By perpetuating the name, we are bringing the victim back from anonymity and returning his identity.

A further objective was to structure a comprehensive database of these names. This database with its numerous fields can be used also as a research tool to study and analyze the Jewish community of Lithuania prior to Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 and the Holocaust in Lithuania.

Contacts and working relationships were established with numerous organizations and private individuals in Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Lithuania and England.

This partial database contains in excess of 20,000 names.

The most important of these are:

Israel:	Yad Vashem - Hall of Names, library and archive Beit Lochamei Hagetaot - library and archives Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel - library and archive Association of Vilna Jews in Israel - library and ohel Yizkor The Archive for Latvian and Estonian Jewry The Haifa Documentation Center
United States of America:	USHMM - Survivor Registry, library, archives and photo archives NY - Museum of Jewish Heritage - Library and Oral History & archives YIVO - library and archives Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
Lithuania:	Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum Holocaust Research Center The Open Society Foundation
Great Britain:	Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial and Education Center
South Africa:	The Cape Town Holocaust Center Friends of Yad Vashem Johannesburg

Requests for name submissions were mailed to Lithuanian survivors by the following organizations:

In recent years the opening of archives in Eastern Europe has yielded new relevant archival material. The archives in Lithuania still need to be extensively researched to extract further names and information relevant to the project.

This is not a historical study- it is a compilation of names of victims. By the sheer nature of the ways in which people were killed in Lithuania these lists can never be complete or final. There will be a minor degree of repetition, inaccuracies and inconsistencies- this is unavoidable often due to the nature of the source material. Many families and individuals were totally annihilated without trace and these names will never be known. In some instances only the surname with the number of family members was available, in others only an occupation such as 'the Schuster (shoemaker)' with a wife and children was given.

In some instances there may be survivor names on some of the lists. There is no comprehensive list of survivors for Lithuania and it is apparent that a number of survivors do not appear on the main survivor database registers. We apologise if anyone is offended by the appearance of a name, but it has not been possible to extract these names.

There was no pre-war census of Jews in Lithuania, unlike Latvia . Census record lists of Ghetto prisoners exist. The lists for Vilna and Shavli have been compiled and published by the staff of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. Approximately 14-15,000 names are on the Vilna list and 4- 5,000 for Shavli.

Some 'private' lists have been submitted to the project and about 5,000 names have been sent either as a result of articles in journals and the press, mailings to survivors or on-line submissions on a website.

A large number of Jews were sent to Stutthof or Dachau and these names were extracted from microfilms and are listed in this first volume.

Some lists are extracted from KGB records or from Soviet Extraordinary Commission lists. There may have been specific political motives in constructing these lists and it is known that in some areas the numbers of names listed bear no relationship to the known numbers of people killed in a particular area.
Yizkor (Memorial) Books for Lithuania are few in number, a list is given in the bibliography. All of these have lists of names of some victims (necrologies) , none have complete lists of those killed in a particular area.

Transliteration guidelines vary slightly from centre to centre- as far as possible those of YIVO have been used. Wherever possible the place name in the text will be given, as it was in common usage in Lithuania. A table of variant place names and contemporary place names is also listed.

We would like to thank the Zantker Charitable Foundation for a generous grant to assist the research, database production and website publication.

The staff of Yad Vashem has been supportive at all levels from the inception of the project and has continuously provided tremendous guidance and advice, in addition to open access to all facilities within Yad Vashem's "Holocaust Victims Names Computerization Projects Support" framework.

This is a further appeal for lists of names, or names of additional individuals or of families, or of people who have knowledge of sources where names may be found.

Please complete the name submission form at http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/lithnames.htm. We welcome your participation so that each victim who perished in Lithuania during the Holocaust may be remembered for eternity.

Rose Lerer Cohen (Jerusalem)
Dr Saul Issroff (London)
rlc@shani.net
saul@issroff.com

Rose Lerer Cohen
POB 68112
Jerusalem 91680

Fax: 972 2 6718207