Rafid Alsaad giving his speech during the 2017 ceremony (© Kazerne Dossin).
My name is Rafid. I come from Syria. I have been in Belgium for 2 years now and I live in Mechelen. I have been working at Kazerne Dossin since 4 May 2017. My first project was to search for photos of deported persons. I used the Yad Vashem website. I compared the website to the list of persons whose portraits were still missing on the commemoration wall. I found 175 new photos.
[…] This project is very important to the family members of those deported from the Dossin barracks. I learned about the Holocaust at school and I read a lot about it, but I never truly grasped the meaning of the word.
Today, I understand. They were individuals. They had their own lives, went to work and had children. They were not simply numbers on a list. Do not forget these innocent victims. We must continue to commemorate them.
In 2018, Rafid continued his mission to find photos and, with help of colleague Salma, he again found over 170 photos. Thanks to researchers such as Rafid, families and friends of deportees, volunteers, and institutes worldwide, the Give Them a Face portrait collection continues to grow in honor of the 25.846 deportees of who many lost their lives during the Holocaust. Thanks to the support of EHRI, as of 2018, Kazerne Dossin also made the portraits available via its portal website. And thus, the research continues. The search is never over.
The article was originally published at the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) blog "Seeking protection"
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The reading of the names during the 2015 commemoration (© Kazerne Dossin)