"One death is a tragedy: a million deaths is a statistic," said Joseph Stalin. Unfortunately, this tends to be the truth. Numbers are a useful tool for measuring things that are too big for us to understand in any other way, e.g., how far it is from earth to the sun. But using numbers often blunts the reality of human tragedies.The Yad Vashem site tries to make the victims of the Holocaust something more than just statistics. Its database is an attempt to preserve a memory of as many individual victims as possible.
Browse through the database, and look through some of the individual pages of testimony. What do you find interesting/memorable in these pages?
-There were millions of names documented onto this online data base. There are still names that still linger than we have yet to retrieve. The data base as put online in 2004 and close to 3 million victims were documented. In 2021 public has now granted access to these data bases. Yad Vashem plans to go further with his data bases for everyone, the survivors and the victims who lost their lives.
ReplyDeleteTreyton Cacek
I find it cool how there is a slideshow showing a name and picture of the victim, which really strikes my hurt. It is also pretty interesting on how this website provides some information as well, saying what happened. It is truly an amazing website, making sure no one forgets about these people that died in this event.
ReplyDelete- Jameson Palmer
I find this source very interesting and helpful. People can look and see if they have any relatives in here. I find it almost like the United States Military and how they always try to give recognition to each and every fallen soldier. I thought the website was filled with information about even how they died and where they were hiding during the war which was interesting to read. - Ricky Berndt
ReplyDeleteReagan Spomer-
ReplyDeleteSeeing individual stories and pictures of Holocaust victims makes it more real and easier to attach human emotions too. This website and its effort to humanize the millions of victims of the Holocaust reminds me of the experience at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. When you arrive, you get a small booklet with a real Holocaust victim and as you move through the museum, you learn about their life and what happened to them during the war. This makes it easier to relate what you are seeing in the museum to a real person and their experiences during the war. This website is a virtual way of doing a similar thing. It is much harder to ignore the realities and atrocities of the Holocaust when you are presented with the millions of faces of those who were persecuted by the Nazis and their efforts to eradicate the Jewish population.
I was reading the article titled "The Most Radical Aspect of AntiSemitism" and before even reading I'm thinking hmm this has got to be good because I have no idea why people would hate innocent Jews. But as I read on, I learned that Jews during the Middle Ages were thought by Christians to be the Devil or something close. This was crazy to me because I grew up always thinking that Jews are -- in simple terms-- just another denomination of Christians but Christians were expelling Jews from many countries in Europe. Before reading this article, I didn't know that AntiSemitism was as widespread as it really was.
ReplyDelete-Michael Nhial
Some things I found interesting/memorable was just honestly the photos and the slides that it provided. For example the holocaust pictures just helped me visualize what it was like for them and what they went through and just gave me a better understanding in a way. When you see the faces it's just hard and can be emotional to think about. I am happy we have this website to never forget and to remember who was lost.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that he collected millions of names during that period. Over 4 million were murdered there, and that was a lot of names to collect. However, all names may not have been collected since the trade claimed millions. However, it says time is running out. As for the databases, I find that there are a lot of research projects and museums. Digital collections also give general information. And then finally a lot of honor for the ones that lost their life
ReplyDelete-Brady Metzinger
-It is fascinating to me that they have so many documents for individual people. I think it’s very important to remember that these people were once alive and had a life to live. I hate to think about Stalin’s quote, “Once death is tragedy: a million deaths is a statistic.” I hate this quote because every death that happened was a tragedy, and no one deserves this to happen to them. That’s remembering them by their name and picture is so important. That they aren’t just part of a statistic, and all of their deaths are tragedies.
ReplyDelete- I think it is amazing that the database has documents and information on so many of the people that were killed. Even though there are already a lot of people documented, there are so many more people that are not and it is important to get there name and story heard so they are not forgotten.
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