ONTOLOGY CDEC

The ontology describing the Shoah domain, proposed here in beta version, aims to formally describe concepts and relationships that characterize the process of persecution and deportation of Jews in Italy between 1943 and 1945. Ontology Class "persecution" describes steps from arrest, to imprisonment (in prison or camps in the Italian territory) and then to deportation to Nazi concentration and extermination camps, or in some cases, to death in Italy before the deportation. Biographical information and fate of the victims of the persecution are represented in the "person" Class. Relationships between these two Classes is the basis of this ontology. The starting point for the construction of the ontology on the Holocaust has been a database with more than 8,000 names of Jews, victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution in Italy, collected by CDEC during decades of research. The first release of this research has been published in "The Book of Memory" ("Il Libro della Memoria") by Liliana Picciotto and on the nomidellashoah.it website

The main goal is to provide a neutral representation of Jewish persecution in Italy, a prototype for helping description of further persecution and deportation experiences occurred in other countries and different contexts.

The specific nature of the experiment on the Italian experience during the Holocaust is clearly described by data (coming from database of the Holocaust victims in Italy produced by the CDEC), with dates and georeferenced places (where they were arrested, prisons or internment camps before deportation ). Classes and properties of this ontology - identified thanks a database analysis and direct support of the research authors - describe a specific age of persecution in Europe regarding Jews in Italy between 1943 and 1945, with arrests, imprisonments, convoys of deportation, concentration and Nazi extermination camps.

With this work we want to reach a crucial first step in the domain description of the Holocaust which will be completed in the future only thanks experiences coming from different countries