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While the app will be made available to anyone interested, the project’s focus is young people, he said. The idea for the app came from a request made many years ago by the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem for an overview of the Holocaust crimes prosecuted by the German courts. At the time, that was not available.
Initially the app will provide information about the pogroms of November 1938, when National Socialists throughout Germany violently persecuted and humiliated Jews, looted their apartments, destroyed synagogues and sent tens of thousands of them to concentration camps.
Ultimately, more than 25,000 documented crimes at 8,000 locations in Germany will be searchable in the atlas, each accompanied by a brief explanation of the crime, its perpetrators and victims.
Funded by the German government
The crimes are categorized into groups, including pogroms, denunciations, crimes against political opponents, end-phase crimes or so-called euthanasia, according to the project description.
“The shocking thing about this project is the range,” said Hauck.
The foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future is responsible for the atlas, which Hauck says is funded by the German Finance Ministry with up to €780,000 ($825,000). It is based on a database compiled by historians containing court files on cases that were tried after 1945.
World War II ended in Europe on May 8,1945 with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. Many commemorations for the 80th anniversary of this event are expected next year.
