- For many, many people who disappeared,
were killed by the Nazis, there is nothing.
There's no grave,
there's absolutely no inscription whatsoever
except for a line,
birthdate sometimes,
and a name.
These documents, it's a testimony.
It's a witness to what happened.
The Arolsen Archives hold 30 million documents.
It's the largest world-wide archive
on the persecution by the Nazis
and on survivors after the war.
We had the intention to publish large collections online,
and we didn't have the resources,
so we were very privileged to find
an excellent partner with Ancestry.
- The partnership essentially involves the archives,
digitizing the millions of paper documents that they have,
and Ancestry creating searchable indexes,
and people everywhere can search the records for free.
- Seven and a half years ago, I found a list from Auschwitz
with my mother's signature on it.
It was a list of 227 names that came
from the Arolsen Archive in Germany.
We can see the front is Auschwitz, November 29th, 1944.
It's a list of women prisoners.
This is my mother's name.
This is the number that was on her arm.
This is her signature, and what's most compelling to me
are the signatures, each different,
each representing their personality.
What I've been doing since then
is going through name by name,
trying to determine what happened to these girls.
What's their story?
Where'd they come from?
Did they survive?
I felt compelled to go to Arolsen
to see if I could learn anything more,
both about girls on the list as well as family members.
This was a girl, 15 years old.
As I was growing up,
my mother told me if I would have an extra piece of bread,
I would give it to Margica,
and if you had a gift of bread,
that means you get to live another day.
- It is more important than ever to show what can happen
if these values about solidarity, about equality,
about respect are not upheld.
- Living memory is dying for those
that were involved in the Holocaust.
We need to capture that information so that
even when they are gone,
experiences that they went through can be preserved
and shared for future generations.
- What, what is this?
That's my grandfather as well.
It's extraordinary to see his actual signature
and that he touched this card.
- It is a privilege for us to contribute
because of people like Allan were researching
their relatives but also other victims of the Nazis
because we contribute to the fact
that they will not be forgotten.
- Let's see.
This would be a picture of my mother in Germany.
I have the ability to do this sort of research.
I have the time.
Many people don't.
For those who can't go where the sources are stored,
the ability to look at it online is extraordinary,
and it's a wonderful thing that Ancestry
is making it available for free to anyone
who wants to see.
The reason I'm doing this is not so much
to pass this to my children,
but to their great, great, great, great grandchildren
because one day when they wake up and say who am I?
What am I going through here?
And when they look back and they see what happened
with their great, great, great grandmother
and her resilience, I want them to take that lesson.