How people in Holocaust photos are being identified

Hundreds of thousands of photographs from the Holocaust are being scanned with the help of an algorithm to identify the people in them.

Software engineer Daniel Platt’s programme, From Numbers to Names, uses facial recognition technology to gives probabilities of facial matches from different photos.

One search managed to identify Holocaust survivor Blanche Fixler in a photo she had never seen before, taken in France, which was on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

“To give somebody a name, you are restoring someone’s own dignity to them, some comfort to their family. It is a form of memorial to the entire Jewish community,” said Scott Miller, exhibit curator of the museum.

There are hundreds of thousands of people murdered by the Nazis, for which there are pictures, but no names.