This week marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. This particular BBC story is about a database dedicated to preserving the memories of Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Let me know if the last sentence in this excerpt doesn't strike an emotional chord with you:
Race to preserve Holocaust legacy | ||
"Popocatepetl," Trude Levi repeated dreamily as if chanting it could transport her back to her childhood.
In a narrow and paper-cluttered computer room in her north London home, Mrs Levi was browsing for the first time a new internet database listing the names and life stories of half of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. She had keyed in her father's name, Dezso Mosonyi, and noticed another entry under the same name. Dezso Mosonyi was also the name of her father's cousin. "I never met him," she said. "But I always remember the postcard he sent me from Mexico when I was a child." "It was a photograph of Popocatepetl," she said. "At the time, I thought it was a most funny word." For someone who has dedicated two decades to writing about the Holocaust, receiving recognition from the likes of Schindler's List director Stephen Spielberg, the database was an unexpected discovery. Yad Vashem, the centre for Shoah (Holocaust) remembrance in Jerusalem, has been engaged since 1955 in retrieving the names of the victims and preserving their memory. The database went online in December and received three million visitors in a month. There is a poignant quote as one enters the site. "I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger," wrote David Berger in his last letter from Vilna in 1941. |
A photograph of Trude Levi taken just before the start of the war