Teaneck High students to collect Holocaust names and memories

The Yad Vashem database aims to be a complete historical record of every Jew killed by the Nazis.

A database and website created by an Illinois teen has a smaller scope but a more immediate aim. Each of Us Has a Name (eachofushasaname.org) is designed to enable individuals to remember Holocaust victims individually. It shows a list of victims whose yarzheits are each week. They can be searched by name or by date of yarzheit. Visitors can “adopt” a name and be e-mailed annually when the yarzheit approaches.

This database is far smaller, containing only 6,438 names so far. And the information on each person is only a birth date and death dates in the English and Hebrew calendars.

“It allows us to say Kaddish for them not only as a faceless mass but also with the dignity and individual attention that each one deserves,” explains Zak Kolar, 15.

Kolar came up with the idea for the site during Yizkor services.

Now he makes remembering Holocaust victims part of his daily life.

“Every night before I go to bed I read the list of people who perished on that day,” he says.