International Holocaust Remembrance Day

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as an annual international day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. This date marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. On this solemn day I will highlight genealogical resources within Ancestry Library Edition about European Jews in areas where the German Third Reich held sway.

Ancestry Library Edition (ALE, for short) has posted a "Holocaust Collection" of electronic databases about Jews within areas controlled by the Nazis during World War II. There are 18 different databases within the Holocaust Collection covering Germany, Poland, parts of the former USSR, as well as Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania.

Let's take just one database as an example: "Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Records, 1938-1945"

ALE provides background information about the depth and scope of the record series that they've digitized as "Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Records, 1938-1945" for easier access:

This database consists of 88,337 names of prisoners interned in the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. The list was compiled in the 1950's to use as evidence against camp administators and guards being put on trial for war crimes.

The Flossenbürg Concentration Camp was established in Bavaria in May 1938. During its existence, approximately 100,000 prisoners arrived in Flossenbürg the majority of whom perished. Jews from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland arrived from the east in late 1944 and early 1945. In April 1945, as United States military forces approached the area, over 22,000 prisoners were forced on what often became death marches from the camp.

Information listed in this database includes:
• Source
• Surname
• Given Name
• Prisoner Number
• Nationality
• Date of Birth
• Date of Entry to Flossenbürg
• Date of Departure from Flossenbürg
• Departure Code
• Comments

Other database titles within the "Holocaust" series are:

Holocaust: Survivor Names printed in Aufbau Newspaper, New York, 1944-1946
Holocaust: Lódz (Poland) Ghetto Hospital Death Records, 1941-1944
Holocaust: Auschwitz Forced Laborers

ALE is available at all our Branch Libraries during our regular hours of operation under our usual and customary terms of providing computer time to our cardholders and visitors. Please note: ALE is not available via wifi.
You must come inside one of our buildings and use one of our computers to access ALE.

If you are interested in learning more about ALE and/or genealogical sources inside our libraries, contact our BCL Reference Librarians. We love to help guide customers through what we provide to help you do your own family research. We can't do it for you, but we do our utmost to give you guidance and offer tips on how to break through genealogical brick walls.