The US Holocaust museum has teamed up with internet genealogy site Ancestry.com to provide online information about those who were persecuted by the Nazis, the museum said.

The project, dubbed WorldMemoryProject.org, is meant to increase sources of information about Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

The project “will dramatically expand the number of museum documents relating to individual victims that can be searched online”, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement.

Its archives in the US capital contain records on 17 million people who were targeted by the Nazis, “including Jews, Poles, Roma, Ukrainians, political prisoners, and many others”, it added.

“The World Memory Project will greatly expand the accessibility of the museum’s archival collection and enable millions of people to search for their own answers online,” the museum said.

“We hope to remind the public that the Holocaust is not about numbers but about individuals, just like us, and to help families uncover histories they thought were lost,” Sara Bloomfield, the museum’s director, said.

“The Museum’s vast archives contain documentation that may be the only remaining link to an individual life.

“Preserving these personal histories and making them available online is one of the most powerful ways we can learn from history and honour the victims.”