The very name of this project, Zakhor (“remember”), carries a duty: not to let those who once were be erased. Among the families whose lineages this platform traces, many were struck by the Shoah — entire communities, entire branches, erased. Six million Jewish women, men and children were murdered. Behind every surname in this directory, there are lives that memory must hold.
Preserving these names is a sacred task, entrusted to institutions that keep them with rigour and respect. Zakhor neither copies nor stores any name-based data of victims. Our role is to link: from each lineage record, an “In memory” link opens the search for the surname directly in the Yad Vashem database, where these names are kept and honoured.
The keepers of the names
Yad Vashem — Base centrale des noms des victimes de la Shoah
JérusalemMore than 4.9 million victims' names are recorded there, a large part documented through Pages of Testimony submitted by relatives. The search can be made by surname, by place and by spelling variants.
Arolsen Archives
Bad Arolsen, AllemagneThe largest archive centre on the victims and survivors of National Socialism: tens of millions of documents on persecution, deportation and forced labour. The citizen project “Every Name Counts” makes it possible to help with indexing.
USHMM — Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database
Washington, D.C.The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gathers millions of names from hundreds of lists and sources, to trace both victims and survivors.
Mémorial de la Shoah
ParisA landmark French institution: the Wall of Names of the Jewish deportees of France, a documentation centre and databases on the deportation from France.
Our commitment
The names of the victims are not data to be harvested: they are people. Zakhor forbids itself to extract or republish these memorial databases, and limits itself to consultation links toward the institutions that bear responsibility for them. To feature these archives more widely, we favour the path of partnership and explicit authorisation.
From any entry in the directory of lineages, the « In memory » block opens a search for the family name on Yad Vashem.