18 | AUGUST 25 • 2022 Oxana Korol of the Hall of Names replied to me: “We are always pleased to hear of cases where peo- ple who are listed in the documentation at Yad Vashem as having per- ished in the Holocaust, were actually able to survive.” She explained the process required to update Fishel’s record, something I will leave for Ira to do. The families of Fishel, Sol and Zygie are participating in month- ly Zoom chats, most recently on Aug. 6. The Alvais brothers are considering changing their last name to Allweiss. There’s talk of California cousin Jack and wife, Patty, and Allweiss cousin Miriam Manber of Manhattan, visiting our cousins in Israel. Alexander and maybe the other Fishel grandchildren intend to tour the Jaslany area if things in Poland “get calmer,” Ira said. She also said that she wants to get a visa to visit the U.S., to “give you all a big hug — instead of Fishel, instead of my mom — but mine, at least once.” We Allweiss cousins already love each other. “Our relatives are so friendly and nice,” said my sister Irene. She and Ira were named for their Aunt Renya Allweiss. “Irina is such a sweet person. They all are — Ira, Gershon and Alexander — very nice people! They have helped to enrich my life by knowing them.” Esther Allweiss Ingber, a native Detroiter of Oak Park, has been associated with the Detroit Jewish News off and on since she was a student intern in 1970. She is a lifelong member of the Jewish Genealogical and Jewish Historical societies of Michigan and a board member of CHAIM. “... And I shall give them in My house and within My walls a memorial and a name ... that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah, 56:5) — inscription at the entrance to The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem Since 1955, Yad Vashem — The World Holocaust Memorial Center has sought to preserve the memory of an estimated 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem works to collect their names and artifacts. The cur- rent museum, opened in 2005 on the edge of Jerusalem, offers nine galleries of interactive, historical displays. They portray the horror of the Holocaust through a range of multimedia. As stated on the Yad Vashem website, the museum offers “photographs, films, documents, letters, works of art and personal items found in the camps and ghettos.” The Hall of Names of Yad Vashem houses a vast collection of Pages of Testimony. Each of the one-page forms preserves a Jew’s personal identity. Survivors, relatives and friends complete and submit the forms for Jews they know either lost their lives or are unaccounted for from the Holocaust era. The Pages include names, biographical details and, when available, photographs of Jewish individuals. “The act of commemorating the names of Shoah victims on Pages of Testimony serves a dual purpose,” said Oxana Korol, employed at The Hall of Names. Those purposes include “providing comfort and closure to the bereaved family, and also leaving a trail of biographical information — including the names and contact details — of those who survived. This informa- tion remains on record as a part of the database, to be preserved for all eternity for genera- tions to come.” The museum’s Shoah Victims’ Names Database currently contains 4.8 million names out of the 6 million Jews widely believed to have perished during the Holocaust. The database includes approximately 2.7 million names from scanned Pages of Testimony and the remain- der were retrieved from archives and other sources. Since the database was uploaded to the internet in 2004, Korol said Yad Vashem has learned many heartwarming stories about “families who have been reunited with or discov- ered relatives with whom they had lost contact in the wake of the Shoah.” Now the Allweisses are one of those families. The Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project continues. It is truly a race against time to find and preserve more names as Holocaust survivors leave the scene. As the Yad Vashem web- site states: “Millions of names that appear in historical documents have not yet been identified or recorded in the database, and many additional names still linger in the memories of survi- vors or in their family folklore. Building the database is a work in progress. It is our moral duty to respect their final wishes to remember them.” Reaching out to Jewish communities and organizations all over the world, the project’s urgent request is to recover more names. Families and individuals are encouraged to check the data- base for the names of Shoah victims known to them. Assistance is available to help people complete the historical record. Children and grandchildren of survivors wanting to participate, based on what their late parents or grand- parents told them, may complete the pages online by visiting forms.yadvashem.org. Following are other ways to contact the museum: Mailing address: Yad Vashem P.O. Box 3477 Jerusalem 9103401 Israel Inquiries: (972) 2-644-3547 Hall of Names: (972) 2-644-3580 Website: yadvashem.org Sol and Zygie Allweiss held up by a strong friend Ira Kuravsky came across this Page of Testimony filled out by her unknown uncle, Zygie Allweiss, for her grandfather and his brother, Fishel Allweiss. The source of Fishel’s attached photo is not known. continued from page 17 ON THE COVER ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Pages of Testimony OUR COMMUNITY