at the visitors, confronting them with the individuality of the deportees.
Kazerne Dossin actively continues to reach out to friends and family members of deportees and to researchers, research institutes and archives worldwide to find new photos. Since the opening of the new exhibition, Kazerne Dossin yearly organizes a commemoration during which newly found photos are added to the commemoration wall, thus continuing the Give Them a Face project.
The yearly ceremony consists of a speech with stories of photos found, the reading of the names while showing the photos and the opportunity for families from all over the world to visit the photos of their lost loved ones on the photo wall.
In 2013, 139 were added, 73 in 2014, 168 in 2015 and 102 in 2016, and last year an unprecedented amount were added to the portrait wall– 265 new photos. This was largely the work of Rafid Alsaad. As a museum focusing on both Holocaust and Human Rights, Kazerne Dossin actively tries to live up to its museum mission by giving recent arrivals an opportunity to work at the documentation center for a year.
Rafid arrived in Belgium from Syria in 2015. As a staff member of the Kazerne Dossin documentation center, he started off scanning historical records, but as a political sciences student, quickly proved to be an invaluable researcher as he set out to analyze archives of institutes worldwide in an attempt to find new photos.
His work became a huge success. During the ceremony on 30 November 2017 Rafid took the stand in front of 250 people, many of whom were relatives of deportees, and explained his motivation:
View of the commemoration wall, which stretches over five flours at the Kazerne Dossin museum (© Christophe Ketels)
Family and friends of deportees look up the added photos on the commemoration wall (© Kazerne Dossin)