Long Night of the Digital Memorial

Everything you need to know at a glance:

When: November 9, 5:30–9:00 p.m. CET
Where: Virtual Open Archive – (digital space of the Arolsen Archives, link sent after registration for event)
Who: Students, university members, anyone interested in participating

What’s it about?

On the night of November 9, 1938, and over the days that followed, the National Socialists deliberately targeted the Jewish population with violent attacks. The police did not intervene, and very few people helped their neighbors or protested. On the contrary, many Germans took part in the destruction and looting. Over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned. The Arolsen Archives have documents relating to the registration of new arrivals at Dachau concentration camp. The documents reveal the huge jump in the number of prisoners at Dachau during this time. The category assigned to all of these prisoners was “protective custody Jew.” The original documents clearly show how exclusion turned into open violence.

On November 9, we are going to make these documents available for digital indexing, and we need your help! We want to cooperate with students, universities and technical colleges to index (digitally record) these notices of new arrivals at Dachau in order to commemorate the victims of National Socialism. Recording the prisoners’ names is a way for participants to actively remember these events, especially the deportation of 30,000 Jews to concentration camps, 1,000 of whom did not survive the camps or died from the effects of their imprisonment.

In our Virtual Open Archive, we want to introduce you to the #everynamecounts project and index documents together. A varied program of accompanying events in German and English (the main event will be held in English) will provide exciting insights into our archive and the background of #everynamecounts and other projects by the Arolsen Archives.

Register now using our contact form!

Virtual Open Archive Program