Canadian singer-songwriter and rock legend Geddy Lee has identified his mother and other relatives in holocaust photos thanks to new facial recognition technology. According to Consequence, Daniel Patt, a Google engineer and descendent of Holocaust survivors, created new AI technology that enables users to upload their family photos and match the results of the visual comparisons to thousands of photos taken during the Holocaust. The project is called From Numbers To Names. 

Commenting on the project’s significance, Patt explained, “I started this project after visiting the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, in 2016. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had potentially walked past a photo of a family member without even knowing it. I’m the grandson of Holocaust survivors, all from Poland.”

Patt also said that he was able to reach out to Lee after finding a photo believed to be of his mother. Lee confirmed her identity in the picture which was taken in a displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen following the concentration camp’s liberation in 1945. The singer was later able to identify photographs of his grandmother, uncles, an aunt and more extended family members while looking through a collection from Yad Vashem, a museum archive in Jerusalem which serves as a holocaust memorial. Lee’s mother, Mary Weinrib, passed away last July, mere weeks before her 96th birthday. She was supportive of Rush and her son’s musical journey. 

Lee and his mother were included on fellow rocker Dave Grohl’s Paramount+ series From Cradle To Stage. In September, the surviving members of Rush will be performing at the forthcoming Taylor Hawkins tribute shows in London and Los Angeles. 

Photo Credit: Dave Gatson