The topic is discussed daily, and it was the subject of conversation again with Portuguese visitors on the European Day of Jewish Culture. The "Name Room" at the Porto Holocaust Museum is striking, both for its scale and for the overwhelming atmosphere it conveys to anyone with even a shred of sensitivity.
The names of 32 thousand victims are written in the room for posterity, a sample that was intended to be representative. Those names were not chosen at random. Some belong to the relatives of local Jewish community members. The others were selected from the vast number of victims (2.8 million) directly exposed at Yad Vashem.
The selection criterion was to represent, as far as possible, the various Jewish communities affected by the catastrophe. Victims from Western, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas are represented there. All shared the terrible misfortune of being arrested in areas occupied by the Nazis or their collaborators.
Yad Vashem doesn't just expose 2.8 million names. It has identified 5 million individual names out of the estimated 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. Since the 1950s, Holocaust survivors, grieving family members, and friends have filled out these one-page forms. They record the victim's name, birth date, hometown, and final fate.
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem does not add names blindly. Trained staff check and cross-reference every new piece of information. They compare new lists with older records to make sure each name is accurate and not repeated before adding it to the official Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names.
