Instructify

BY AARON FOWLES

July 27 is the UN’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Google has partnered with Yad Vashem to further digitize and index its extensive archive of Holocaust photographs and documents.

The archive, which contains almost 14,000 items, is a visual journey through the Holocaust, showing authentic pictures of life in the ghettos, extermination camps, and postwar reconstructions and memorial services.

Clearly, this is a powerful collection of imagery that can be leveraged in the teaching of WWII history.  Some of the photos are extremely graphic, so I wouldn’t suggest letting younger students explore the site freely.  Each photo is accompanied by a short description, which should allow students to contextualize what they are looking at.

Moving forward, Google’s plans are to deploy their optical character recognition software on the archives, which will make searching for documents from family members much easier. Enter in a name, and you’ll be presented with an assortment of materials connected with that person. The possibilities for research are endless.

Yad Vashem

Related stuff

On This Day looks at today in history

Awesome Stories: Connecting primary sources from around the web