I would like to avail myself of the opportunity to tell you and your readers what has happened here in the three weeks since the launch, and what they can expect from Yad Vashem.

First of all I would like to thank all of you for the overwhelmingly positive responses that we have received from the more than 2.75 million visitors to the site.

For those of you who sent us comments or corrections through the site: We are currently working our way through the backlog of approximately 12,000 such queries. We appreciate your patience. I am providing details and suggestions regarding some of the most common categories of responses.

For those of you who have received responses which seem unsatisfactory, feel free to contact us again. We are trying hard to find a balance between the efficiency of standard answers, and the need to examine each case individually. Many of our policies are still being clarified and modified based on actual responses, and we can only do this through your feedback. Also, as our staff becomes more experienced we hope that fewer errors in judgment will occur.

If you have not managed to access the site we suggest trying again. Many of the initial technical problems have been solved. We suggest trying again. Appendix 1 includes a few suggestions for those still experiencing technical difficulties.

Appendix 2 includes a few guidelines regarding corrections. These are designed to help you in your submissions, and in your evaluation of our responses.

After corrections, the most frequently asked questions are about locating submitters. Unfortunately we rarely have information beyond what can be found on the Pages of Testimony. Appendix 3 includes guidelines which you may find helpful.

The other type of comment which we are pleased to receive, is that an individual who appears in the database survived. See Appendix 4 for various possibilities.

If you discover overlapping records pertaining to the same individual such as two different Pages of Testimony, or the person's name in a list and on a Page of Testimony, we will make a note of it so that we can link the records at some point in the future.

When dealing with Pages of Testimony this is rare, but in the case of material derived from archival lists, this is to be expected. While all the archival lists in the database include mostly people who perished, in some cases they include people we know survived, and in this case the fact that they survived is noted in the database. In cases of individuals from lists where we do not know their fate (even though we know that statistically, most of those in the list perished), the people in the list are not marked as people who were murdered in the Holocaust . (See, for instance, the records from the census of the Lodz ghetto.) Not all individuals who were deported-- from Drancy, for example--were subsequently murdered. If someone is not marked as a survivor and you know that they in fact survived, we want to know about it these cases, so we can, in fact, note this in the database. We can note that the individual is a survivor, but will ask for documentation, such as a copy of an identity card or passport, to verify it.

The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names is a work in progress, and the product of cooperation between the public and Yad Vashem. We continue to welcome your corrections, comments, photographs, and new Pages of Testimony, even if there may be a delay in our replies.

With best wishes for a Happy Hanukah,