1. Scholarly Work with Sources

Scholarly work with sources entails reviewing and systematically processing all relevant genealogical sources documenting Jewish life in Germany prior to 1945. These consist primarily of birth, marriage, and death registers (civil status records from registry offices); while some survive only on microfilm, the majority have been digitized and are freely accessible, albeit scattered across numerous websites. These registers are supplemented by other genealogically valuable records—such as residence registration files, census data, and lists of Jewish households—as well as documents related to persecution, such as deportation lists or death certificates from the Arolsen Special Registry Office. Data entry is always accompanied by source citations, ensuring that the origin of the information remains traceable and verifiable for anyone. The sources are displayed in the database (bottom left) and will soon be listed in the appendix to this page.

 

2. Worldwide Correspondence

Extensive correspondence with over a thousand individuals—including private citizens whose ancestors were German Jews, volunteer researchers, archive directors across Germany, and state institutions—has fostered fruitful contacts and further additions to the collection. This creates a cooperative network from which both sides benefit.

 

3. Participatory Modules

A central element of the educational work surrounding the "Jews in the German Reich" database is the participatory modules project. This initiative offers the opportunity to link the brief biographical profiles of individuals listed in the database with supplementary information. There are three key areas that can be populated with diverse contributions from database users: A. Portraits, B. Documents, and C. Links.

 

A. Portraits

Providing an image for every individual in the database is a magnificent undertaking; a vast number of portrait photographs—found online, in archives, or in private collections—can be linked to the database entries. To date, this has been implemented to a limited extent in some regional databases; however, the potential is far greater, and these resources could be centrally consolidated within this database.

 

B. Documents

In addition to portrait photographs, a wide variety of other documents are being integrated into the database: family announcements (e.g., from the *Berliner Tageblatt*, *Aufbau*, and Jewish community newsletters); business advertisements found in address books, travel guides, newspapers, and other media; and documents from private family archives that record the lives of German Jews, as well as their emigration or murder. At a time when the number of contemporary witnesses is dwindling, such "speaking" documents are vital for ongoing educational work; they restore the visibility of individuals who were reduced to mere numbers in the camps.

 

C. Links

Links point to pages containing more detailed biographical information—such as the *Stolpersteine* (memorial cobblestone) websites of many German cities, Wikipedia entries, the gravestone project of the Association for Computer Genealogy (*Verein für Computergenealogie*), and other genealogical projects run by various associations and institutions. Films featuring interviews with Shoah survivors can be included, as can projects created by students. All three of these additions (portraits, documents, and links) can be developed independently by individuals or project groups. They offer school classes a personal connection to the Shoah—for instance, by allowing students to select individuals who were the same age as them at the time of their emigration or murder (a "time-twin" project), or who lived in the same city or on the same street. This approach also facilitates the inclusion of Jews from the former German eastern territories—whose memory is much harder to honor through initiatives like *Stolpersteine* within the German commemorative landscape—and encourages collaborative projects involving German and Polish, Russian, or Lithuanian student groups or initiatives.