NEW ONLINE TOOL ALLOWS SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT AUSCHWITZ VICTIMS AND TRANSPORTS TO THE CAMP
Pawel Sawicki
“Restoring and presenting the identities of victims of Auschwitz is an extremely important part of our mission. The SS men stripped the victims of their humanity, but also – by destroying the evidence of crimes – they tried to erase their identities. For the camp administrations victims were just numbers. For us, they all had their own name, face and history. Victims.auschwitz.org is much more than just a research tool. In fact, it is a step-by-step construction of a memorial to the victims of Auschwitz, which not only allows us to see individual people, but also – by showing the transport system – illustrates the monstrous scale of the terror system of Nazi Germany,” said the Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński.
“The new website is a result of many years of work by our team of archivists and historians. We are able to use this modern tool largely due to the work done as part of the project “Resorting the identities of those deported and imprisoned in KL Auschwitz”. Part of our mission aims at preserving the memory of all those deported and imprisoned in the camp, meaning it is not only important for us to study archival documents, but also to make them available. I am greatly hopeful that it will not only serve researchers, but also those who want to learn and talk about the tragic fate of people in Auschwitz,” said Rafał Pióro, Museum Deputy Director, responsible, among other things, for projects carried out in the Archives.
“The list of victims that was available on our website has now been enriched with a chronology of transports to Auschwitz. A record of a single transport includes: the number of people deported, the range of numbers issued to men and women, and in the case of transports of Jews, the number of people murdered in the gas chambers immediately after selection – said Ewa Bazan, deputy head of the Analysis and Archival Information Section, responsible for the substantive side of the project.
Individual transports were linked to prisoners’ names and surnames according to the ranges of camp numbers issued during registration. This allows to assign information about a specific person to the transport.
Data regarding the transports are also presented on an interactive map.
“On the map, the marked places indicate where the deportations began. It illustrates the scale of transports to Auschwitz, aiming to make users aware of the scope and scale of deportations. Additionally, it helps to geographically locate places, giving users, for example, an understanding of which towns in their area were the scene of those tragic event – said Maciej Majcherek, creator of the page who is responsible for the IT side of the project.
The data comes from many archival sources and scientific studies. These include, among others: the numbered lists of transports
On victims.auschwitz.org, you can search for information about people deported to the German Nazi camp Auschwitz, as well as learn details about most transports to the camp. Currently, it contains data on 1,187 transports and 265,702 people, based on approximately 1 million document entries.
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