Monday, January 05, 2015

Mapping the Holocaust


Yahad – In Unum is an organization dedicated to identifying mass Jewish execution sites and mass graves in the former Soviet Union. The organization collects forensic evidence and seeks out eyewitnesses to the executions of Jews and Roma to identify holocaust sites where the Nazis and their allies murdered Jews in towns and villages throughout Eastern Europe.

The Map of Execution Sites is a Google Map of the sites that Yahad - In Unum has identified so far. The red markers on the map indicate the location of execution sites on the map where Yahad - In Unum has added details of their investigations.

If you select a red dot on the map you can read details about the site, including the number of witnesses interviewed and details and videos from eye witnesses to the site's use in the holocaust.


The Vilnius Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania. During the two years of its existence, starvation, disease, street executions, maltreatment and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps reduced the population of the ghetto from an estimated 40,000 to zero.

Exploring the Vilnius Ghetto: A Digital Monument is a Leaflet powered map that shows over two hundred points of historical significance, pulled from memoirs, archives, original Ghetto documents and artifacts, and oral and historical accounts. Users can explore the map on their own, using filters to find places and events of interest; or they can follow a number of curated stories.


Since 1997 German artist Gunter Demnig has been creating memorials for individual victims of the Holocaust. Demnig's stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) are small, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of Nazism.

Each stolperstein is placed in the sidewalk outside the victim's home. Stolpersteine Online is a Google Map of the memorials which have been erected. The project has created about 35,000 stumbling blocks so far. This is a very small percentage of the total number of victims of the Holocaust, however if you zoom in on any German city on this map you still can't fail to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Nazis Holocaust.


The British Library has collected a number of oral recordings featuring personal accounts of the Holocaust from Jewish survivors living in Britain. The collection includes interviews from two oral history projects, the Living Memory of the Jewish Community and the Holocaust Survivors' Centre Interviews.

The Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust map features a number of these first hand oral accounts from survivors of the Holocaust. Each recording appears to be mapped to the birthplace or childhood home of the interviewee.

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