Nazi victims' details go online

The centre is working to get the details of all six million victims

Biographical details of three million Jews killed in the Holocaust are to be posted on the web for the first time.

Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, said it was a "duty" to ensure that the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis will not be forgotten.

The museum called its website a "work in progress" and said it would work to retrieve the details of every victim.

The database is partly based on more than two million "pages of testimony" given by survivors, family and friends.

"Yad Vashem undertook to retrieve the names of the Jewish victims and to preserve their memory," the Jerusalem-based centre said.

"This is the moral duty of the Jewish people - our last respects to the victims."

'11th-hour drive'

The information can be accessed in either English or Hebrew. Details include date and place of birth, marital status, residence and date and place of death if known.

There is also a link to an image of the "page of testimony" submitted to the centre.

Yad Vashem has been compiling information on Holocaust victims for more than 50 years.

Some 1,500 staff were put to work a decade ago to turn written testimony into digital information, spokesman Esti Yaari told the Associated Press.

"We are also launching an 11th-hour drive to get more information because we realise that time is running out," she said of the remaining three million whose details are not on the site.