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Crowdsourcing: Every name counts!

On the upcoming 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which coincides with International Holocaust Memorial Day, the Arolsen Archives are launching a crowdsourcing project titled “Every name counts” that will begin with a special day of action for schools in the Hesse region of Germany.

We have an ambitious goal: to ensure that all the names contained in the documents held in the Arolsen Archives can be found in our online archive and to achieve this aim as soon as possible. We are working hard on this ourselves as well as cooperating with a number of partners and applying new technologies in order to reach this goal. And we are kicking things off with a crowdsourcing project titled “Every Name Counts”, which enables anyone who is interested to help us index the information contained in the documents and get to know how meaningful this work is. A name on a list is often the last trace left of a person before they were murdered by the National Socialists. This is what makes it so very important for family members in particular to be able to find these names easily from wherever they are all over the world.

On 27 January 2020, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and International Holocaust Memorial Day, we will be launching this project together with hundreds of school pupils from all over the Hesse region of Germany. This special day of action will be held under the patronage of Hesse’s Minister of Digital Strategy and Development, Kristina Sinemus.


»My father never talked about the relatives he lost. So recovering even a name on a list is very important for us. These files add much more information. I am so appreciative of the efforts made in uploading this data.

« Feedback from one of the users of the online archive


I highly recommend to support this project!

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Personal view or conclusion on this post

I rarely support a crowdfunding project as there are so many. So where do you draw a line? But this project is so worthwile that I need to support it.