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I have a relative who is looking into her family history. According to her aunt many of her relatives on her father's side (Beinhorn) were victims in the Holocaust. Do records exist online that she might be able to search for them? (Their first names have been lost to history, so the relationships between individuals will be a key element to these records in order to piece the family history together.)

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2 Answers

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Not a lot of Holocaust records are online, but Fold3.com has a few and Ancestry.com has a partnership with the USHMM to index and put some online. And keep in mind that many Holocaust records for some areas, especially the eastern front (modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) did not survive at all. For example, the records for the Belzec death camp were destroyed.

I would recommend that your relative post her query, with as many names, towns, and dates that she knows, on one of the JewishGen.org e-mail listserves. She should also contact Yad Vashem in Israel and see if they can help do a look-up in their files, only a small number of which are online.

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The Yad Vashem site has a database of people who perished in the Holocaust. It includes records from the Gedenkbuch and individual pages of testimony. The data records include dates and places of brith and residence prior to deportation, and may also include names of parents and other biographical inorfmation. The pages of testimony are particualry valuable, as they are often submitted by surviving relatives, whose information may also be reported on the form.

Here are the search results for the Beinhorn last name. You will need to filter by location, as there are quite a few names.

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The need to rely upon such "pages of testimony" in the absence of more usual sources brings into sharp relief the assumptions that we make (in other circumstances) about the reliability of second- or third-hand reports. – Fortiter Jan 5 at 7:07
In my experience with such records, I found two main classes: one class, submitted by surveying relatives, and the other submitted by researchers. While these documents are not sourced, they certainly offer valuable guidance about where to seek primary sources. – Gene Golovchinsky Jan 5 at 7:17

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