Holocaust Museum to digitize vast archive for web

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Joseph Finkelstein had never seen a photograph of his grandfather. The family had no idea when he died or where he was buried. Finkelstein's father last saw him on April 28, 1945, when they were separated at Mathaussen Concentration Camp in Austria.

For decades Finkelstein's father, who's now 85, had carried an enormous load of guilt because they got split up. It took years of poring over microfilm and original documents for them to begin to find answers, but a Washington museum is hoping to use the Internet to make the process go faster for other families.

Persistent research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum - and even a trip to Poland and Austria - helped the family learn in the last two years that Jakob Finkelstein had survived to see the camp's liberation but died four days later, simply too sick and weak. And he had a real burial spot in a municipal cemetery in Austria.

It's resources like those that the museum hopes to make available to people around the world with the ease of a few keystrokes.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HOLOCAUST_ARCHIVES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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I've been transcribing Immigration records for this project since January. I encourage everyone remotely interested in history or family genealogy to get involved. They have several different projects you can work on, some are harder than others, but it's all fascinating.

Gotta index a few more pages of the US Census 1930 Missouri first, lol.