While Google does more than plenty for capitalistic reasons, it also takes on numerous side projects with a more charitable spirit. One of those projects was a website partnership with Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based museum storing videos, photos, and other artifacts from the holocaust, launched their new site in January with Google’s help, moving their collections to an online, feature-rich format. Between then (January 26th) and May 2nd (the holiday Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day) the site has seen over 5,000 comments.
The comments aren’t merely discussions on the photos (although some discussion is also taking place). Many holocaust experts, as well as descendants of those who lived (and often died) in the concentration camps, have brought new perspective to the photographs. This has included items such as caption corrections, in-depth photograph information (the names of buildings in the photograph, where pictures were taken from, what street location), and stories of those in the photographs (such as family members who lived in the area, died in the concentration camp, or the fully stories of individuals in the periphery sections of photos). To further accommodate this, Google has created a page to stream stories and their associated pictures.
Several other new features have also been added for Yom Hashoah, including a geo-location map that shows the region where photos were taken, and a new YouTube channel. The YouTube channel stores over 400 hours of video across 474 video files, and includes both an original and dubbed version of the famous Eichmann trial. The video collection is linked from the Yad Vashem site, but can also be visited directly using this link.
[via the Official Google Blog]
