Digitization for Remembrance
New documents on Soviet prisoners of war available at #everynamecounts
To mark the 85th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Kyiv, the Arolsen Archives, in cooperation with the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe, are making around 31,000 documents on Soviet prisoners of war available on the #everynamecounts crowdsourcing platform. Volunteers can now transcribe names and many other personal details from these historical documents – and help shed light on the previously unknown fates of individual POWs.
On September 26, 1941, World War II’s Battle of Kyiv ended in a victory for the German Wehrmacht. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner by the Germans. For many of the Soviet POWs, their capture marked the beginning of a terrible ordeal that would end in death. During the Second World War, up to 5.7 million Soviet military personnel were held as prisoners of war by Nazi Germany. More than three million were murdered or died as a result of the inhumane conditions in the prisoner-of-war camps.
Millions of unknown victims
Information about the names, places of origin, and fates of the up to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war remains incomplete to this day. One reason for this is that records of their captivity and deaths are scattered across numerous archives in Germany and the successor states of the Soviet Union. Making these records accessible therefore requires international cooperation.
Prisoner-of-war documents at #everynamecounts
Around 31,000 documents from the project will be available on the #everynamecounts crowdsourcing platform from September 26, 2026, onward. The documents were created by the Wehrmacht and German authorities to record deaths among Soviet prisoners of war. They come from the Federal Archives, from the holdings of the former Wehrmacht Information Office (B 563). They contain the names of Soviet POWs and other personal details, as well as information about the circumstances of their deaths and where they were buried.
With just a few clicks, volunteers can transcribe this information from the historical documents. Digitizing the data the documents contain will make it easier to search for information. It can also help provide new insights to family members, researchers, and professionals involved in historical and political education. It is important to remember that the documents often reflect the Nazis’ dehumanizing perspective. Some contain information that was deliberately falsified – the cause of death, for example – in order to conceal the scale of the crimes.
Death records: The last traces of Soviet prisoners of war
Most of the new #everynamecounts documents are death records that the German Wehrmacht kept for deceased Soviet prisoners ofwar. In some cases, the records also document where the deceased were buried.
At the time, documents like these were part of the bureaucratic record-keeping process surrounding prisoners. Today, they may become one of the last traces a person left behind. The information they contain is particularly important for relatives of the people concerned. A name, a place of birth, or a burial site can help reconstruct a previously unknown life story and restore a personal dimension to a fate that had long remained anonymous.
“The term ‘Soviet prisoners of war’ includes people with different backgrounds and languages,” explains Moritz Wein, Director of the Arolsen Archives. “All the data volunteers enter on the #everynamecounts platform helps bring individual life stories and paths of persecution to light – for families, for researchers, and for a culture of remembrance that takes a nuanced view of this group of victims.”