This article aims to explore the personal name as an aspect of human identity, based on our analysis of several tens of oral-history autobiographical interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (http://vhaonline.usc.edu). The text reflects on the transformations and meanings of name in the war and post-war period, focusing on the compulsory and voluntary name change, but also its loss and supplementation by the (tattooed) number in the concentration camps. In this context we also pay attention to the tattoo as a component of social identity of the Holocaust survivor and different attitudes. In the concluding parts of the text, we also investigate the post-war commemoration of the Holocaust as a process, which aims to return the lost names to the victims of the Nazi genocide of people labelled as “Jews”. Our research points to the tendency to understand name and identity as an indivisible duality, which is mutually influenced. At the same time, it suggests that the loss of name or its compulsory change is not reflected by the survivors as an especially traumatic experience, in the context of following events. A particular symbolic value of personal name can be seen in the cases of the people murdered during the Holocaust, and in the context of current commemorative activities the naming of Shoah victims is of central importance.
