#everynamecounts challenge for 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation ⋆ The Baltic Review

To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Arolsen Archives are launching a new #everynamecounts challenge: Starting on January 24 and continuing on through the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day, volunteers can help digitize a collection of 27,000 prisoner registration cards, most of which are from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The challenge at a glance

The goal is to digitize a collection of 27,000 newly scanned prisoner registration cards between 8:00 am on January 24 and 8:00 pm on January 31.
This user-friendly, intuitive tool makes it easy to capture the data from the cards: https://everynamecounts.arolsen-archives.org/en/
More than 180,000 volunteers have already digitized over 7 million documents for #everynamecounts in recent years.

On January 27, 2025, it will be 80 years since the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. For decades, survivors and researchers have been gathering information about the atrocities committed by the Nazis, working to preserve the memory of those who were murdered or made to perform forced labor at the camp.

However, much of the information contained in historical documents has yet to be collected and analyzed, so the Arolsen Archives are inviting the public to participate in a special #everynamecounts challenge to mark this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. The challenge focuses on various card files containing a total of 27,000 prisoner registration cards, most of which are from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The originals are held in archives in Moscow and Prague.

Making victims’ names and stories visible

Anyone who has a smartphone or computer with internet access and a few minutes of spare time can help shine a light on the names and stories of people who were held in concentration camps. The name on one of the cards is Marek Josef Alt, a Polish boy who was born in the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 16, 1943. He was given the prisoner number 155912. In October 1944, the Nazis deported him to a camp for Polish children. There is no record of what happened to him after that. After the war, Marek’s parents spent years searching for their son, but they never found him. Personal stories like Marek’s highlight both the brutality of Nazi persecution and our responsibility to remember its victims.

Expanding the digital memorial to the victims of Nazism

#everynamecounts invites the public to help build the world’s largest digital memorial to the victims and survivors of the Nazi era. This crowdsourcing initiative makes it easy for people to take a stand and get involved themselves.

About the Arolsen Archives

The Arolsen Archives are the world’s largest archive on the victims and survivors of Nazi persecution. The collection has information on about 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s Memory of the World. It contains documents on the various victim groups targeted by the Nazi regime and is an important source of knowledge for society today.