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

