Concentration Camp Prisoners' Belongings, Cape Town Marriages, Belgians in Britain, and More

August Ahlers' watch

A new online database has photographs of more than 3,000 items from the International Tracing Service's archive.  The items belonged to prisoners taken to the Dachau and Neuengamme concentration camps during World War II.  Some items were collected in Hamburg.  The photos have been placed online in hopes that the items can be returned to survivors or their family members.  More information about the database is available in a press release on the ITS site.

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The Great Synagogue (the Gardens Shul) in Cape Town, South Africa, is celebrating its 175th anniversary on November 6, 2015.  The search is on for photographs of weddings that took place in the synagogue; photos can be sent to admin@gardensshul.co.za.  In addition, those who were married in the synagogue are invited to be in a group photograph to be taken before the November 6 festivities.  Read more about the event here.

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As many as 250,000 people fled Belgium at the beginning of World War I and went to Great Britain.  The Amsab Institute for Social History is now seeking stories, photographs, and documents about those Belgians.  As half of the refugees came from Antwerp, the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp is participating in the effort.  Those who share information will receive two complimentary tickets to the November 15 "Story Collection" day at the museum.  (Even though the page about the event says it's in English, most of the text is still in Dutch.  You can use Google Translate to get the gist of the information.)

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A photographer who took photographs of tenements and their residents in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, 45 years ago is now trying to identify the people in the photos.  Several of the photos are included in an article about the search, and all of the photos are available on the Shelter Scotland Web site.

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The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy (IIJG) is working on a project to publish the late Paul Jacobi's 114 typewritten genealogical studies (monographs) of European rabbinical and other prominent Jewish families.  The institute now needs volunteers to proofread the text.  The work requires a high-level knowledge of the English language and will be spread out over the next ten months.  To volunteer, contact Ami Elyasaf, IIJG Executive Director, at director@iijg.org.  Information about the Jacobi collection can be found at http://iijg.org/resources/jacobi-papers.  A list of the family names represented in the typewritten genealogies is at http://iijg.org/main-2/jacobimonographs.

Auschwitz Prisoner Photos

In 1941 and 1942, when Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners were brought into Auschwitz, they were photographed similarly to mugshots: front, right, and left views.  The photos were identified by the person's camp number and what type of prisoner (Jewish, political, Jehovah's Witness, etc.) but not by name.  Photos were not taken of people sent directly to the gas chambers.  By 1943 photographs were rarely taken.

More than 30,000 of these photographs have survived, out of what must have been a much larger number.  They are held at the Auschwitz Museum.  There is no public inventory of the photos, but a little more than 2,000 have been shared with the International Tracing Service, Yad Vashem, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  The Auschwitz Museum also permitted Giuseppe Zambon to publish more than 600 photos in a book, Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter.

A searchable database with 2,255 names is now available on Steve Morse's One-Step Website.  This database includes the names from Auschwitz: Abels Gesichter and from the photos that have been shared.  The data were assembled by Peter Landé of Washington, D.C.  Information on how to order copies of photos is given on the site.

Mr. Landé hopes to add more information to the database when possible.