Names of 5 million Holocaust victims identified, Israel's Yad Vashem says

JERUSALEM — For decades, Hinda Koza-Culp’s family clung to a black-and-white photograph and a haunting story: Her great-grandmother’s six siblings and parents were all murdered in the Holocaust, their names largely lost to history

JERUSALEM — For decades, Hinda Koza-Culp’s family clung to a black-and-white photograph and a haunting story: Her great-grandmother’s six siblings and parents were all murdered in the Holocaust, their names largely lost to history.

Then last year, Koza-Culp typed her great-grandmother’s maiden name, Litvak, into an online database and discovered something she never could have imagined.

Two of her great-grandmother’s siblings had survived. One of those siblings had a son living in Israel — and he wanted to talk.

“We spent so many years apart, so many years not knowing each other,” Koza-Culp told NBC News. “To take that back, to get some of that joy and love back … the best revenge is living well, I guess, as they say.”

Koza-Culp’s discovery was made possible by the Names Database at Israel’s Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. And now, the very database that helped Koza-Culp find her family has reached an important milestone: Yad Vashem has recovered the names of 5 million of the estimated 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.