Yad Vashem Fraud

I can understand your concern, and you also need to recognize that many Jewish victims of the German part of the Holocaust alone were not recognized as Jewish victims at the time. 6,000,000 Jewish victims alone is more than likely a significant underestimate of how many Jewish victims there were. There are also unrecognized Jewish victims whom were oppressed in the Soviet Union (including in the Soviet-named “The Doctor’s Plot”) and the Arab & Arabized Middle East (including in the 1929 Hebron Pogrom—which was a pogrom in British- and Arab-occupied Israel—and the 1947 Aleppo Pogrom).

Looking at the comments that people are making in regards to the numbers, here are my thoughts:

1
In a database of over 4 million names, you will have a certain number of errors. If 99% of the information is accurate, then that is a 1% error rate, meaning that 40,000 of the names could have some type of error. "Error" does NOT mean that the person was wrongly included in the list. It may often mean that the birth year was wrong or some other detail is wrong.

2
Many many Jewish communities , especially in Poland, but in Hungary and other places as well, had entire towns and villages full of Jews that were murdered by the nazi thugs, down to the last Jew. This means that there was nobody left to submit a Page of Testimony to Yad Vashem. Most historians estimate that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust exceeded 6.5 million. The mere fact that the Yad Vashem database is not 100% perfect does not speak to this stark and shocking reality of the number of Jews murdered.

3
Over the last 15 years, Father Desbois in Europe has been doing unprecedented work in terms of finding mass graves of murdered Jews that were not even known previously. If one is not familliar with his work, do some research and learn for yourself.

To speak of Yad Vashem "BULKING UP" the numbers is an accusation that , besides making no sense, is an insult to the tragic reality of the Holocaust. People should educate themselves and be careful about about what they write. Finding a few errors does not give one a license to
discredit the careful work of Yad Vashem.

I agree with Nathan that there certainly no basis for disparaging the work of YV, which is has brought a tremendous amount of awareness and is a great tribute to those who perished.

I also agree that the 4,000,000 number must be way off, not only because of the survivors included, but also because of the duplicates. For example, they have hundreds of thousands of names added from the Lodz Ghetto registations. There were multiple registrations over the years of the Ghetto's existance, and obviously, many people were registered more than once. The list includes survivors, and also all of those who perished for whom relatives already submitted pages of testimony. In addition, every time I search a surname, there are numerous results which are clearly duplicated from multiple family members submitting testimony for the same victims.

For those reasons, I find this project to be so groundbreaking. While we may never reach the magnitude of names recorded by YV (who knows?), the names we do have are accurate, crowdchecked, and for the most part not duplicated. There is also the added benefit to seeing the names in the context of places and families. Kudos to all who have contributed so much to this project!

My take is that they really have a conflict of interest - on the one hand to truly memorialize all the victims, on the other hand the higher the number, the more “successful” they seem.

I have benefited greatly from their work, and while in the past I found it easy to fix a duplicate or error, when I tried recently I ran into a technical brick wall, so I stopped bothering.

I also wish they would show the original documents that are supposed to be available by a certain date, and while that day has come and gone, it doesn’t seem to happen “automatically” or on schedule. I guess someone has to manually release the info. and they could be understaffed.

It would also be nice if they eventually synch their records with Bad Arolsen records, a site I find difficult to get information from.

There’s also the question of how to handle mistaken testimonies, which despite being wrong can offer valuable genealogical information.

All in all it’s a great project that needs some tweaking. When looking at the sheer number of victims represented it may be inflated (because of duplicates or mistakes, unfortunately some victims may never be known) but for the discerning user it’s invaluable. And I do appreciate how they try to consolidate duplicates.

And now to Geni… I requested this a few years ago, but how hard is it to add a HY”D / הי״ד suffix. It may not qualify as a true suffix, but I believe the victims deserve to have this rule bent - if this is the reason for not adding it. For now I have to go through the IGNORE process, including “Mark this correct for all users” if I want the “inconsistency” to not show up.
(So far I couldn’t figure out how to add profiles to projects, not sure if it’s my phone or something else.)

Thanks to all of you for the wonderful work you do. One day AI will make this easier, and by clicking on for example a JewishGen entry we will be automatically directed to the matching profiles on Geni…

I completly agree with the note of Yitzchok Kranczer .

YS has no idea how many duplications they have, how many survived are listed as victims and how many "victims" died BEFOR 1939.

Just one example for those "died twice" is a Holocaust survive who was killed in Israel in 1948 and is listed BOTH in YIzkor list of Tzahal and in Yad Vashem.

I strenuously object to your accusation of "FRAUD" [emphasis added] in the subject line
You wrote in the comment:
"IF [emphasis added] their goal is self-aggrandizement and fundraising, it is indeed a fraud.
Thank you for writing "IF"
Nevertheless, speculation about "self-aggrandizement and fundraising" is a very unfortunate choice of words.
You have done a great service to Shoah deniers and minimizers.
I'm sure that was not your intent, but words matter.
Especially the misuse of a word [fraud] that has a very specific definition in The Law.

I have had a similar experience. My uncle, who survived and lived a long life is listed as killed by a distant relative who had made Aliyah before the war. As his niece, I have tried to correct the record but have found it to be a cumbersome process.
I have also found multiple entries for the same person but submitted by different people. Some of the entries are incorrect. .

I don't know why you would think that Yad Vashem collects the names of th murdered for financial reasons. It was founded and funded by the state to gather and remember the victims. And they know that, for all the research they do and did, some of the info will be wrong. A third cousin of mine was listed as dead. In fact he survived Auschwitz. But until someone writes in and tells them, they cannot know. Some of the personal testimonies also have mistakes. But they put up all the info they have, without judging whether it's right or wrong.

All I will say is with regard to my grandfather, they were the only source confiming that he was in Drancy, he was in France after escaping Germany only to be arrested in France due to a French informant. He was then sent to Auschwitz and was executed in the courtyard the day after his 42nd birthday, luckily my father was Kindertransport and somewhat safe in England.

There a lot problems...much important then this issue...snd there wehre people werks they makes mistakes....i do not know the problem of this Mister Important...
Please be open, why do open this discussion?
In Germany ,in my Familie their are so many persons killed...that i dont want te count them all. That the Germans are Prout that they Killed so mutch...that is my Problem!!

Of course there are inaccuracies in the Yad Vashem database. But to make this the basis of an accusation of fraud is irresponsible and offensive.

With his gratuitously inflammatory post, Mr. Kranczer puts himself in a very weak position to be imputing motives of "self-aggrandizement."

The credability of Yad Vashem depends on the accuricy of the data, not on the numbers they present.

In the last year (after many years of ignoring the problem) they modify the database to be able to include and display duplications.

Still much work need to be done. There are many (many...) duplications which can easily be found and "merged" .

BTW, Geni includes several hundreds thםusands of victims much more than what is counted in this project. It is pitty the process of placing these uncounted victims in the project is so difficult and in many cases impossible.

I must apologize for the tone of my original post. While trying to make a certain point, I used the wrong words.

Yad Vashem does work that is important for survivors, their families, the Jewish people and all of humanity. I don't really think that they deliberately bulk up their numbers to promote the organization. It has been a personal suspicion (as a possibility), which should not have been expressed publicly.

My real beef with YV is the lack of candidness regarding the accuracy of their count. Claims such as "to date an estimated four and a half million Jews murdered in the Shoah have been commemorated in the database" are dishonest. So is the unequivocal statement that so-and-so "was murdered in the Shoah", when that specific record isn't at all conclusive. Ideally, these records should have a tag labeling them as only possible victims.

A note to one critic: Accusing me of abetting Holocaust deniers is ridiculous, even if you think that I'm not doing it intentionally. There has been plenty of fraud relating to those horrible events; pointing them out does nothing to minimize them.

Fair enough, Yitzchok.