The Hall of Names is a building at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs ‘and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem; where the names of millions of Holocaust victims are commemorated. In fact, the database of the Hall of Names also exists in the main database of names of Holocaust victims on the Yad Vashem website. Most of the names of those who perished are commemorated by Pages of Testimony; and the rest are commemorated by data collected from various lists. Including lists of ghetto and camp prisoners; lists of Jews whose property was confiscated by Nazi Germany and its allies; lists of Jews deported in transports; Also lists of victims in death marches. 

Hall of Names History

In 1968, a “names room” was established at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, with original testimonials, in alphabetical order. So in 1977, the Hall of Names building was inaugurated at Yad Vashem. Moreover, in the 1980s, Yad Vashem photographed about a million pages in microfilm to improve the possibilities of making the pages accessible to the public; and to create a backup for the pages. With the beginning of the aliyah of the 1990s from the former Soviet Union; the rate of arrival of witness pages at the Hall of Names doubled and reached about 3,000 a month. And in 1990 he began collecting names from lists of deportations of Jews as well as from lists of inmates of camps and ghettos; lists compiled by the Nazis and their allies. In the 1990s, a project to compute the names of the victims of the Holocaust in the Hall of Names began.

So in a campaign to collect the names of Holocaust victims in 1999 under the auspices of President Ezer Weizmann, 380,000 pages of testimony were received this year alone, and another 70,000 in 2000. In 2000, the computerized database of Holocaust victims’ names was created, and in 2004 Online. Furthermore, with the inauguration of the new Yad Vashem Museum of Holocaust History in 2005; the database of names of Holocaust victims kept in the Hall of Names was transferred to this museum. Today (2019) more than 4.8 million names of Holocaust victims are kept in the Hall of Names.

Hall of Names: About the New Monument 

In the Hall of Names, a circular walking route for visitors. Also, the space above and below the walking route is built as two inverted cones whose bases are adjacent to each other; at a height and depth of about ten meters. On the wall of the upper cone were pictures of Holocaust victims. Also in the middle of the circular route is an entrance to the room for searching for the names of those who perished using computers; and on the walls around the route, there are shelves with binders containing the original witness pages. These testimonials are not accessible for review by visitors but can be viewed on Yad Vashem’s computers in the next room; as well as in the database of Holocaust victims’ names on the Yad Vashem website.