AI helps identify Holocaust victims

AI gives dignity to victims - 19th December 2022

Identifying the faded faces of Holocaust victims from grainy old photos may now be possible, courtesy of an innovative digital tool. The website 'From Numbers to Names' holds the key to putting names to faces, utilising artificial intelligence (AI) in conjunction with a database of over 34,000 images, containing approximately 200,000 faces.

The brainchild of ex-Google software engineer Daniel Patt, he's collaborating with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to retrieve long-lost information. Scott Miller, museum director, stressed the significance of naming people in the images and explained, 'You're restoring some semblance of dignity to them, some comfort to the family,'adding, 'it's a form of memorial to the entire Jewish community.'

Thanks to the From Numbers to Names software, Holocaust survivor Blanche Fixler was reunited with a personal photo that she'd been unaware of. As a child, Fixler lost her mother and siblings to the Nazi regime, but she survived, thanks to her aunt Rose's dedication and quick thinking. She has a vivid recollection of hiding inside a bed, fearing for her life. 'I felt them [Nazis] tapping on the bed,' she recalled, 'I said, you better not breathe or sneeze or anything – or you'll be dead.'

Now 86 and a resident of New York, Fixler uploaded a personal photo, according to the website instructions and together with the facial recognition technology, Patt was able to pick out Fixler's face from a group shot taken outside a French school in wartime.

Following the discovery, Patt presented the photograph to Fixler in New York, causing past memories to come flooding back – a song from her childhood and the names of peers and loved ones. Fixler also homed in on her aunt Rose, and put a name to a former schoolmate, thereby assisting Patt and the museum in their quest to locate remaining survivors and victims.

Scott Miller remarked, 'We all know the figure – six million Jews were killed, but it's really one person six million times. Every person has a name, every person has a face.'

And one million of those victims have yet to be identified.