Veszteségkartonok

A key ambition that emerged right after the Holocaust in Hungary was to collect the names of the hundreds of thousands of victims, most of whose exact fates still needed to be clarified. Compiling name lists of victims who in most cases had no graves was understood as an essentially important task but also proved a difficult and prolonged process that has lasted until today. Next to the Országos Zsidó Segítő Bizottság (the National Jewish Aid Organization) and the Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság (National Relief Committee for Deportees), the Zsidó Világkongresszus Magyarországi Képviseletének Statisztikai Osztálya (the Statistical Department of the Hungarian Representation of the World Jewish Congress) was also devoted to collecting the names of victims in the immediate aftermath of the war. The Statistical Department gathered its information on the victims from various sources and created a database of tens of thousands of cards that is available for researchers at the Hungarian Jewish Archives. The cards contain the following information: the victim’s name, place of birth, date of birth, mother’s name, address, occupation, circumstances and location of death.

The cards are arranged in very loose alphabetic order. Many cards have names on both sides, most of the time they are not from the same letter.