German Communities Registry

The purpose of the Yad Vashem Communities Registry Project is to perpetuate the history of the communities destroyed during the Holocaust. The historiography of the communities focused on countries, and sometimes on districts, but not on the history of the local communities. With the increase of interest in the local communities, this Record Group serves as a very important source for historians and researchers working in this field.As part of the preparation of the volumes of the German Communities Registry during the 1960s, many sources were gathered regarding the history of the communities. As part of these preparations, letters were sent to municipalities and local authorities in West Germany, requesting that they complete a questionnaire regarding the fate of the Jews who had lived in their places during the Nazi period. Many of the municipalities and authorities sent lists of the Jewish residents who had lived in these places including details regarding the fate of the Jews. Additionally, the Registries staff members checked local news items in the main German-Jewish newspapers regarding the Nazi period, as well as information from two newspapers published outside Germany (the London"Jewish Chronicle"and the Jewish weekly newspaper published in Switzerland) in which there were news items which could not be published in Germany. The data they found regarding the communities was recorded on file cards. A file was opened for each community about which they were interested in writing in the Registry. Sources gathered about the community were collected in the file: photocopies of articles and archival documents, file cards containing information that had appeared in the newspapers and other sources, statistical data, and so on.As the work progressed, rough drafts for each entry to be written in the Registry regarding that community were added to the file as well. After the completion of the work and the transfer of the material for printing, the files were handed over for safekeeping in the Yad Vashem Archives.