I received this information from an email correspondent, Michoel Rotenfeld:
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Project Zikaron, an initiative of Touro University, is a groundbreaking digital archive containing more than 1.2 million pages of historical materials documenting over 16,000 Jewish communities around the world, including thousands destroyed during the Holocaust.
Developed over more than a decade under the direction of Michoel Rotenfeld, associate director of Touro University Libraries, the online resource brings together rare manuscripts, autobiographies, communal records, historical documents, and other materials, many previously unavailable online, to preserve the history and cultural heritage of Jewish communities across the globe.
"We invite researchers, descendants, and historians to discover not just where their ancestors died, but the rich, complex world in which they lived,” Rotenfeld said.
Available at www.zikaron.tourolib.org, Project Zikaron, whose name means “memory” in Hebrew, provides access to materials in more than 30 languages, including Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, Russian, and Ladino. Its extensive collection includes memoirs, local histories, music, cemetery records, cookbooks, and other sources offering glimpses into the daily lives, traditions, and institutions of Jewish communities across generations.
Although the archive extensively documents European Jewish communities devastated by the Holocaust, its scope extends far beyond Europe, encompassing Sephardic, Mizrachi, and other Jewish communities worldwide. Its holdings range from Jewish cemeteries in Manaus, Brazil, and communities in Argentina's Pampas to those of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Philadelphia.
The collection also documents Jewish military cemeteries in northern France and thousands of execution sites where Jews were murdered by Nazi mobile killing units in Eastern Europe. By bringing these materials together online, Project Zikaron seeks to make Jewish history and heritage accessible to people everywhere, regardless of whether they can visit the places being documented.
Unlike conventional digital archives, Project Zikaron organizes its resources by geographic location, allowing users to search for a city, town, or village using its current, former, or Yiddish name. Results link directly to relevant historical materials and, in many cases, the exact pages where a particular community is mentioned. An interactive map helps users explore neighboring communities and their histories. In addition to geographic browsing, all resources are searchable in full text.
Among the archive's most significant holdings are more than 1,250 yizkor books, memorial volumes documenting Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. The books have been digitized, made fully searchable, and indexed by the more than 4,000 locations they reference. The collection also includes more than 1,200 Jewish autobiographies and memoirs, along with centuries-old pinkasim, communal registers containing valuable information about Jewish life.
Some materials preserve historical information that might otherwise have disappeared. A rare 1931 book documenting the Jewish cemetery in Kielce, Poland, for example, records the names of 1,422 men buried there between the 1870s and 1920s. Almost all of the tombstones were subsequently destroyed.
Rotenfeld said the project grew out of his lifelong fascination with Jewish history, particularly firsthand accounts of communities whose traditions and daily experiences risk being forgotten.
"I always wanted to make this wealth of information available to those for whom it would be meaningful and relevant,” he said.
Building the collection required years of locating rare publications, borrowing materials from private collections, digitizing documents, and indexing references to thousands of communities. The project has received funding support from the Claims Conference, with additional materials continuing to be incorporated.
To further expand the collection, Project Zikaron is working through diplomatic channels with governments, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, and religious groups to obtain additional information about Jewish communities, particularly in the former Soviet Union and Muslim world. Members of the project's leadership have also conducted academic research visits and plan to continue those efforts.
Project Zikaron continues to expand, with new content added regularly and an artificial intelligence-powered name index under development. The project also invites anyone who knows of a Jewish community not yet represented in the archive to contact its organizers and help preserve its history.
“Project Zikaron is not just archiving the past,” Rotenfeld said. “We are reviving the memory, the voices, and the actual stories of the people who shaped it.”
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