Researchers use AI to identify hundreds of thousands of 'missing' holocaust victims

Researchers in Israel are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to do what humans couldn't do, identify hundreds of thousands of Jewish people whose names remain missing from officialmemorials almost 80 years after they were killed in the holocaust.

Ahead of the Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day — commemorated on Monday (May 6) this year — the staff at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem told Reuters that they were stepping up the searches for details of known and unknown victims. To do this, they have developed an AI-powered software.

Missing from pages of history

During the Second World War (1 Sept 1939–2 Sept 1945), more than six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Over the years, volunteers by scouring through statements and documents, checking film footage, cemeteries, and other records have managed to track down information on 4.9 million individuals. However, many remain missing from the pages of history.

Talking to Reuters, Esther Fuxbrumer, head of software development at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, said there were huge gaps in their existing ninemillion records.

The Nazis "just took people, shot them, and covered them in a pit. And there was no one left to tell about them," remarked Fuxbrumer.

"It's very hard for a human being to do it - just to go over everything and not miss any details," she said.

Moreover, the volunteers have had to face the mammoth task of linking individuals to dates, family members and other details, watching for duplicates and comparing accounts.

To ease this strain, researchers have developed the AI system. Developed over the last two years, the system can sift through records in English, Hebrew, German, Russian and other languages. It is currently undergoing tests.

How capable is the AI?

The software has already proven its capabilities.

"That technology works very fast. It takes a few hours to go over hundreds of testimonies and it's very exact, the results," said Fuxbrumer.

"We saw that from each testimony we could get between six or seven names with full details that we could put automatically into our database, and around 10 per cent of the names that we found we had already in our database, but 90 per cent are new names that we didn't know about."

As part of the trials, the researchers are running tests on 400 of the 30,000 testimonies they have. Already, they have added 1,500 new names to their records, and as per Esther Fuxbrumer, many more were expected in the coming weekswhen the system is used on all 30,000 testimonies. The next phase will cover diaries.

"We believe that way we'll be able to bring a lot of stories about a lot of victims that were killed, little kids that no one else knew, to tell us the story about what happened to them," stated the researcher.

(With inputs from agencies)