Research and education project on pictures of Nazi deportations
Educational game #LastSeen wins DigAMus Award, photo: &why
The collaborative project #LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi deportations is a unique combination of Holocaust research, education, and remembrance. Since 2021, historians around the world have been researching deportation photos taken in the Reich territories between 1938 and 1945. The photographs they have discovered are gradually being published in the digital #LastSeen image atlas, which has won multiple awards. Hundreds of photographs from 60 locations in Germany will be accessible online by 2026.
Over 200,000 people were deported from the German Reich between 1938 and 1945, most of them to the ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe. The collaborative project #LastSeen is the first initiative to focus on collecting, researching, and publishing all surviving deportation photos. The images reveal how Jews, Sinti and Roma, and people with disabilities were rounded up, publicly humiliated, and then deported – in the busy streets of cities and towns, in front of their neighbors, who were often implicated in the crimes. Often these are the last photographs taken of people before they were abducted and murdered
#LastSeen digital image atlas
Der digitale Bildatlas enthält alle bisher recherchierten Deportationsfotos und liefert zu jedem Bild zahlreiche Detailinformationen, z.B.: Wer ist auf den Fotos abgebildet? Welches Schicksal mussten die Verfolgten erleiden? Was ist über den historischen Kontext bekannt? Wer hat fotografiert? Über verschiedene Filter und eine zoombare Karte lässt sich die Sammlung gezielt durchsuchen.
Mirko Drotschmann, alias “MrWissen2Go”, presents the #LastSeen research and education project using the example of a photo series showing a deportation from Brandenburg. The project also includes an interactive game in which schoolchildren can search for clues themselves.
#LastSeen film shoot with Mirko Drotschmann in Brandenburg Havel. Source: Arolsen Archives.
2024 Grimme Online Award
One of more than 1,000 entries, the #LastSeen image atlas won the prestigious Grimme Online Award in the Knowledge and Education category in 2024. The jury praised the “rare immediacy” with which #LastSeen brings the horrors of racist persecution to life. The image atlas also impressed the jury with “its academic precision, the ethical handling of historical image documents and the thoughtful use of digital resources.”
Presentation of the Grimme Online Award for #LastSeen. Credits: Mareen Meyer
Ethical considerations
Deportation photos depict situations of extreme violence. They show people being degraded and mistreated – often in full view of the public. Is it permissible to publish such photos again and again? And if so, what needs to be taken into consideration? What responsibility do people who look at the pictures bear? The #LastSeen team has given these questions much thought.
