How entries are made
Jistory is an index, not an authority. Every entry links to its source, and the source is always more reliable than our summary.
Where the 8,217 entries come from
- 3,272 from the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) and 2,728 from the Encyclopaedia Judaica: the descriptions were drafted by an AI language model (Anthropic's Claude), paraphrasing the cited article.
- 858 from the Jewish Virtual Library: rewritten in Jistory's own words with AI assistance. No Jewish Virtual Library text is reproduced.
- 1,151 adapted from Wikipedia and 120 from Wikidata.
- 88 quoted from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia.
How AI-drafted entries were checked
Each AI paraphrase was checked automatically: the model had to quote the sentence of the source that states the event, and the entry was discarded unless that quotation was found word for word in the article and the date matched. An automated review then removed entries outside Jistory's scope. AI-drafted entries have not been individually reviewed by a person. They can contain errors in dates, places, numbers or names. Each entry says where its text comes from.
Who is responsible
Jistory is run by an individual volunteer, who edits the site and is responsible for its content. Errors are corrected when reported: see Corrections & contact.
Editorial principles
- We record what was done to Jews and name those responsible ("By").
- Accusations against Jews (blood libel, host desecration, well-poisoning and others) are labelled false wherever they appear.
- We use "Holocaust" and "Shoah" for the Nazi German genocide of six million Jews. Victim numbers come only from the cited sources.
- Perpetrators' terms ("Final Solution", "Jewish Question", "resettlement", "Aryanization") appear only in quotation marks.
- We do not compare other events to the Holocaust or use Holocaust terms as metaphors.
- Entries naming living people or existing organisations state only what cited sources state.
About old sources and their language
Many entries are based on the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) and the Encyclopaedia Judaica. They are major works of scholarship, but they reflect the knowledge and vocabulary of their time, and the documents they cite often quote the hostile language of persecutors. We paraphrase rather than reproduce that language. Historians have since revised some figures, dates and attributions. If you find wording that is offensive or misleading, or that repeats a persecutor's claim as fact, please tell us.