"We want to remove barriers between people and this information," said Michael Lieber, Yad Vashem's CIO. "Our mission is to commemorate the victims and document and educate about the Holocaust. EMC's generous donation enables us to make this information readily accessible to the widest public possible. The Holocaust is often very hard to comprehend, but when you hear the words of someone who survived Auschwitz, it hits home."

Established in 1953, Yad Vashem documents the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, preserving the memory and story of each of the six million victims, as well as those who survived the Holocaust. Through the EMC Information Heritage Initiative donation, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education was able to copy more than 135 terabytes -- approximately 100,000 hours -- of testimonies belonging to the Institute onto an EMC CLARiiON(R) networked storage system. This system was then shipped from USC in Los Angeles, Calif. to Yad Vashem in Israel, where the videos will be made accessible at Yad Vashem's Visual Center.

"The USC Shoah Foundation Institute has been working diligently to distribute the entire archive of testimonies to universities and institutions around the world," said Sam Gustman, Chief Technology Officer at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. "We are thrilled that EMC provided the technology necessary to enable Yad Vashem to be added to the list of institutions with access to the archive."

"Yad Vashem provides the world's largest repository of information on the Holocaust to ensure six million lives are never forgotten and the voices of survivors are not lost," said Joel Schwartz, EMC's Senior Vice President, Storage Platforms. "We're honored that our donation and our information infrastructure technologies will help preserve and share this information for years to come."

Introduced in May 2007, the EMC Information Heritage Initiative advances the preservation and protection of humanity's information heritage to make important historical documents and cultural artifacts readily accessible for the future. To date, EMC has donated more than $20 million through the EMC Information Heritage Initiative and supported numerous information heritage preservation projects for organizations, such as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library and the Search for the Jikji Campaign.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC and CLARiiON are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE EMC Corporation

http://college.usc.edu/vhi

"This list is more than just a list of names or a residents directory. It is a memorial to those murdered and those forced into exile. The shame for the crimes committed by the Germans is mixed with grief for the loss that Germany inflicted upon itself," explains Dr Salm. "The murderers wanted to eradicate the Jewish people and Jewish identity. They did not succeed. The Yad Vashem memorial site calls out to us: 'Look - we are alive'".

The directory of Jewish residents in Germany between 1933 and 1945, which was four years in the making, was produced by the Bundesarchiv (federal archives) on behalf of the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future". Around 2.5 million data records were collected from over a thousand different sources. Jewish institutions and interest groups were the driving force behind the initiative. The directory, which was handed over to the German government in September, will also be made available to other international memorial sites.

Contact:

    Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future"
    Press and Public Relations
    Franka Kuehn
    Markgrafenstr. 12-14
    DE-10969 Berlin

    T: +49(0)30-259297-76
    M: +49(0)174-980-14-24
    kuehn@stiftung-evz.de

    http://www.stiftung-evz.de

Contact: Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future", Press
and Public Relations, Franka Kuehn, Markgrafenstr. 12-14, DE-10969 Berlin, T:
+49(0)30-259297-76, M: +49(0)174-980-14-24, kuehn@stiftung-evz.de

"It provides information about the fate of Jews in National-Socialist Germany, their place of birth, their place of residence and about whether and when they left Germany or when they were murdered," said Franka Kuehn, a spokeswoman for the foundation.

The group said researchers worked for four years to compile the list, which is aimed at helping family members and scholars determine the fates of Jews living in Germany during the Holocaust.

www.upi.com

The pope's plan to elevate World War II Pope Pius XII to sainthood sparked protests among Jews who say he should have done more to prevent the Holocaust. Yalla Kadima said the pope has agreed to slow the beatification process to "maintain good relations with the Jews."

Pius XII headed the Roman Catholic church from 1939 to 1958.

Israel has invited the current pope to visit the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, which has a plaque castigating Pius for doing "nothing" to intervene in the mass deportations of Jews in Europe to Nazi death camps. The Vatican maintains Pius sheltered Jews in monasteries and churches.

Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem in 2000.

www.upi.com