#everynamecounts challenge for International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026
Volunteers can help commemorate people deported to Auschwitz from France and Belgium
The Red Army liberated Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27, 1945. Eighty-one years later, the work of examining the historical sources and documenting the names of those who were murdered is still not complete. To preserve the memory of every individual fate, the Arolsen Archives are inviting volunteers to take part in the #everynamecounts challenge to mark the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day. The goal is to capture information that has not yet been digitized from around 58,000 documents by working together. This year, the focus is on documents from the Archives Service for War Victims at the State Archives of Belgium.
Index cards documenting persecution of men, women, and children as Jews or as Sinti and Roma
The card file contains valuable information about victims of Nazi persecution who were deported in large numbers to Auschwitz by the SS from the Mechelen assembly camp in Belgium or from camps in France, such as Drancy. The cards were created between 1941 and 1944 by the Security Service of the German Security Police (Sipo-SD).
Edith Fuchs, an 18-year-old from Vienna, was one of the deportees. She had fled to Brussels with her father and two siblings after Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938. In October 1942, Edith was arrested and deported to the Dossin barracks in Mechelen (Belgium). The barracks are located halfway between Brussels and Antwerp and are now home to a memorial and a museum. The SS rounded up people persecuted as Jews or as Sinti and Roma in the barracks before deporting them to the extermination camps. Eight days after she was arrested, Edith was deported to Auschwitz and, like her father, was murdered there on arrival.
This Brussels card file also contains cards for people who managed to go into hiding or who fled, escaping deportation.
Taking part is easy
Anyone with a few minutes to spare and a computer or smartphone can help bring the names and fates of victims of Nazi persecution into the light. #everynamecounts invites people to contribute to the world’s largest digital memorial to the victims and survivors of the Nazi era and take concerted action to make sure their stories are never forgotten.
The #everynamecounts challenge at a glance
- Approximately 58,000 documents from the Belgian Archives Service for War Victims will go online at 8 a.m. on Monday, January 26
- An easy-to-understand, intuitive tool is used to enter the data:
everynamecounts.arolsen-archives.org/en - Participants can create their own account and form a group to take part with friends, family, or colleagues
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.
