This website is in memory of 86 Jewish women and men. They were born in various European countries, had peaceful childhoods and looked forward to an autonomous future. Many were recently married, some had children; all of them were in the middle of their lives.

But suddenly, the National Socialists stopped the course of their lives. They persecuted Jews not only in Germany, but all throughout Europe. They hunted their victims in their homelands, wherever they lived. Whoever could not save him- or herself suffered death at their hands. Over one million murders in Auschwitz alone.

Only a few of those who were deported to Auschwitz had the the fortune to leave the camp again. In early August 1943, 29 women and 57 men held on to their hopes of surviving as they left the camp to go to Alsace. However, their fate had already been sealed long ago. SS anthropologists had selected them to be killed in the concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof (Alsace). Skeletons were to be prepared from their corpses, to be used at the Reich University in Strasbourg, in research that was ideologically motivated by race.

The murders were completed, though not the exhibition. The mortal remains of those murdered were placed in a mass grave at the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg-Cronenbourg after the liberation of Strasbourg.

These 86 people should not be forgotten. That is my main concern, for which I would like to visualize their biographies here on this web page.

Hans-Joachim Lang

Please!

This website should be published in all languages spoken by the 86 victims of this Nazi crime. On this website, their relatives as well as the descendants of their friends and acquaintances should have the ability to read the text. Unfortunately, this aspiration outreaches my own linquistic competencies. I am therefore dependent upon the work of idealists. It is possible to translate little texts or biographies of single persons. Naturally, the translators will be mentioned below.

Thanks!

Many people from around the world have worked together on this website and its contents. They helped with the research, translated texts, and contributed documents and photos. It has always been a great joy and motivation for me to have their friendly and cooperative backing throughout the time spent on this project. This will also continue into the future, because the job is far from being finished. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, both the unnamed contributors as well as the supporters I name below.

I would like to specially thank the relatives of the 86 murdered men and women, who supported both the early research for the book The Names of the Numbers and the more recent research by sharing their memories, documents from their family histories, and personal interest in and support for the project. Out of these contacts and meetings grew connections that I hope to keep alive in the future. I would like to thank the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur, without the financial support of which the website would not have been able to be accomplished. Communications designer Christiane Hemmerich contributed magnanimously to this project. Out of sympathy for the mutual desire to create an open forum for the continual remembrance of the 86, she personally outfitted the website with graphics, for which she deserves a big thanks!

My hope that the 86 Jewish men and women memorialized here remain unforgotten is shared with those who contributed in a great variety of ways to the research project:
Francis Amar (Landecy), Aliki Arouh (Thessaloniki), Hedda Anderson (USA), Peter Armstrong (USA), Esther Biller (USA), Willi Hans Braun (Tübingen), Anne-Marie Faraggi (Neuchâtel), Rosemarie Fleischer (Argentina),Ruth Galinski (Berlin), Marion Gamain (La Colle-sur-Loup), Nina Gorgus (Frankfurt), Hannelore Göttling-Jacoby (Hamburg), Evelyn Grollke (Pullach), Gerd Halmans (Geldern), Emanuel Heyd (Strasbourg), Marcia Ikonomopoulos (New York), Alina Karcz-Zug (Tübingen), Mathilde Klapholz-Francès (Israel), Beate und Serge Klarsfeld (Paris), Annette Klawonn (Berlin), Charoula Kokkinou (Thessaloniki), Heinz Salvador Kounio (Thessaloniki), Erika Kounio-Amarilio (Thessaloniki), Johann Lambeck (Freiburg), Robert Lehmann (Lehmann), Henry Litchi (Paris), Mechthild Mayer (Friedrichshafen), Beate Meyer (Hamburg), Andreas Nachama (Berlin), Angelika Nafziger (Berlin), Charles Noah (Huntington Park), Jacob Pollak (Amsterdam), Rita und Jechiel Porat (Herlya), Berit Reisel (Oslo), Thierry Rozenblum (Liège), Eric Salm (Aventura), Hans W. Schneider (Lions Bay), Jeffrey Sherman (London), Rita Simmersbach (Washington), Carl Simon (Wauwatosa), Hermann Simon (Berlin), Benno K. Simoni (Berlin), Léonhard Singer (Strasbourg), Nelly Sturm (Berlin), Rosa Talboom (Antwerp), Raphael Toledano (Strasbourg), Sophie Vandepontseele (Brussels), Viola Voss (New York), Patrick Wechsler (Strasbourg), Gisela Wibihail (Vienna), Susanne Wiedmann (Tübingen), Julius Windhorst (Tübingen), Frank Wittendorfer (Berlin), Teresa Wontor-Cichy (Oświęcim), Jerzy Wrobléwski (Oświęcim).