Researchers in Israel are turning to artificial intelligence to comb through piles of records to try to identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust, including those whose names are missing from official memorials.

Jerusalem

Researchers in Israel are employing artificial intelligence to sift through historical records in an effort to identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, whose names currently remain unlisted on official memorials. This initiative, led by the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, aims to uncover the identities and stories of individuals who were killed during the Holocaust, including both known and previously unknown victims.

The case of Yehudit and Ruth Rosenbaum, twin girls from Romania, exemplifies the project's objectives. Despite the tragic circumstances that led to Ruth's death in Auschwitz under the supervision of Mengele's group, very little was known about her until recently. The use of artificial intelligence by the research team at Yad Vashem has significantly enhanced the ability to find detailed information about victims like Ruth, even from non-family members who encountered them in the camps.

This AI-driven approach analyzes records in multiple languages, including English, Hebrew, German, and Russian. Prior to the adoption of this technology, volunteers manually identified information on approximately 4.9 million individuals. The AI streamlines this process, reducing human error and significantly accelerating the search. It can rapidly analyze hundreds of testimonies, many of which reveal new information about victims' lives, relationships, and circumstances of their deaths.

The technology has proven to be incredibly efficient, with each testimony analyzed leading to the discovery of six to seven new names with full details that are then added to the Yad Vashem database. Impressively, 90 percent of these names are new to the researchers, showcasing the AI's capability to uncover previously unknown facts. So far, 1,500 new names have been added to the records, and as the system continues to review all 30,000 testimonies, that number is expected to grow.

This project underscores the importance of remembering each victim as an individual with their own story. By identifying and commemorating those who were murdered and otherwise might have been forgotten, researchers at Yad Vashem are ensuring that the memories of victims continue to be honored and preserved for future generations.



AI helping Holocaust researchers find unnamed victims

Esther Fuchs-Brumaire holds up a photo of twin girls. These are Yehudit and Ruth Rosenbaum from Romania that were twin girls, four and a half years old, that were in like a smaller group under Mengele's group in Auschwitz. Yehudit survived, Ruth was killed, was murdered. Ruth is one of the more than six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. Until recently, very little was known about her. Fuchs-Brumaire is part of a team of researchers at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, who are trying to fill the gaps in existing records. Using artificial intelligence, they have been able to step up the search for details of unknown and known victims like Ruth. And we were able to bring more information about Ruth from someone that's not her family at all, someone that met her in the camp. And we believe that way we'll be able to beat a lot of stories about a lot of victims that were killed, little kids that no one else knew to tell us a story about what happened to them. The AI-powered software sifts through records in English, Hebrew, German, Russian and other languages. Over the years, volunteers have tracked down information on 4.9 million individuals by hand. They're reading through statements and documents, checking testimonial film footage, cemeteries and other records. Then there's the mammoth task of linking people to dates and family members while watching for duplicates and comparing accounts. Fuchs-Brumaire says AI streamlines the process and removes human error. That technology works very fast. It takes a few hours to go over hundreds of testimonies. And it's very exact, the results. A human being wasn't able to do it. They saw that from each testimony, we could get between six or seven names with full details that we could put automatically into our database. And around 10 percent of the names that we found, we had already in our database. But 90 percent are new names that we didn't know about. Fuchs-Brumaire says 1,500 new names have been added to the records, and many more are expected in the coming weeks, as the system gets through all 30,000 testimonies. There are lots of people that were murdered and no one knows about them. And there were people like me and you that lived here and had feelings and had lives and were happy and wanted to live. And it's very important to remember every name of them and each one and one of them.

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