AI helps identify Holocaust victims

Website helps name Jewish dead - 19th December 2022

The website 'From Numbers to Names' has a special job. It's for Jewish people who want to find and name their family members. Their relatives died in the Jewish Holocaust, in the Second World War. The website uses AI – artificial intelligence – to put faces and photos together.

The program was created by computer expert Daniel Patt and it uses a library of 34,000 old photographs. With the help of AI, Patt tries to match Jewish survivors with the pictures. It's very important to put names to faces.

The website helped one survivor in New York recently. Blanche Fixler, 86, uploaded one old family photo. Fixler's face matched a photo in the library. It was in a group photo which was taken outside a school. Fixler survived the Nazis with the help of her aunt. She had to hide inside a bed.

Patt travelled to New York to show Fixler the picture. Fixler recognised her aunt Rose and another friend. That gave Patt three more names.

Patt works with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum's Scott Miller says, 'Six million Jews were killed, but it's really one person six million times. Every person has a name.'