Deportation and camp records
Transport lists, camp registers, and administrative records that document arrests, movements, and imprisonment.
Holocaust Family Research
Reconstructing Families Across the Holocaust
Many Jewish families carry a gap where relatives once were: a town no one visited again, a name remembered without dates, a survivor who spoke little. The Doros Institute researches those gaps through surviving records, and reports what the evidence establishes and what it cannot.
This work focuses on reconstructing individual Jewish families and tracing relatives before, during, and after the Holocaust.
What We Research
Questions this research can address
- What happened to a relative who was never heard from again
- Where a family lived before the war, and where they were taken
- Whether a survivor's postwar trail can be reconstructed
- How a family line continued through relatives who emigrated
- Which names on a memorial or testimony belong to your family
Research begins with whatever you already have. Incomplete information is the normal starting point, not an obstacle.
Sources
Where the evidence comes from
Arolsen Archives collections
The international collection of documents on Nazi persecution, including displaced-persons and tracing files.
Yad Vashem names and testimonies
Pages of Testimony, victim name records, and submitted testimony that often preserve family relationships.
Postwar and displaced-persons records
Registrations, aid-organization files, emigration papers, and arrival records that trace survivors after 1945.
Prewar community records
Civil registration, census, tax, and community lists that place a family in a specific town before the war.
Family testimony and documents
Letters, photographs, and remembered names, evaluated alongside the documentary record.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collections
Survivor and victim databases, registration records, camp and ghetto lists, personal papers, oral histories, and other Holocaust-era collections.
Which collections apply depends entirely on the family, the region, and the years involved. The scope review identifies the sources most likely to hold answers for your specific case.
Our Care
Handled with the weight it carries
- Findings are reported plainly, without dramatization.
- Difficult details are shared in writing first, so you can read them privately.
- Uploaded documents and family information remain confidential.
- Uncertainty is stated as uncertainty, and sources are cited wherever possible.
Questions
Frequently asked
Begin with what you know.
Share the names, places, and memories you have. Every request receives an individual review, and no research begins until the scope and fee are agreed.
Begin a Research Request