Holocaust Property Database Provides Trove of Info
A database of Holocaust-era property records has become the largest publicly available, single-source database of lost Jewish property assets from that era.
Project HEART-Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce, an initiative of the Jewish Agency for Israel in cooperation with the government of Israel, announced last week that the database hit the 1.5 million mark in the number of available records.
The online database was unveiled May 1 with 500,000 records. The records have been made available to help Jewish families identify personal property confiscated by the Nazis and to help victims seek restitution, according to the project.
The records include property addresses, lists of homeowners, professions, lists of known confiscated properties, business directories, insurance policies and other archival information.
“This is the first worldwide list of property confiscated, looted or forcibly sold during the Holocaust era to be made available to survivors and their heirs,” Anya Verkhovskaya, HEART project director, said, adding that “the response to the database has been overwhelming, with approximately 100,000 hits happening each week.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
