Germany has compiled a list of some 600,000 Jews who lived there from 1933 to 1945 and suffered discrimination by the Nazis, an index that is to be distributed among leading archives to help descendants research the fate of their families.
The government said Wednesday it would give the list to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Washington's Holocaust Museum, the Jewish Claims Conference and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
Germany's federal archive drew up the list, which the government and a foundation that oversaw the compensation of Nazi-era slave laborers financed it to the tune of €1.57 million (US$2.24 million).
"In handing over this list, we want to make a substantial contribution to documenting the loss that German Jewry suffered through persecution, expulsion and destruction," foundation leader Guenter Saathof said in a statement coinciding with a handing-over ceremony at the chancellery.
This is an enormous thing. And very moving I guess in terms of the potential information and closure it will bring.
My family lost in the Holocaust were from Czechosolovakia.