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Annual report 2023: Projects and campaigns

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Over 100,000 volunteers support #everynamecounts

The crowdsourcing initiative of the Arolsen Archives

Tens of thousands of volunteers all over the world are building a digital memorial to the victims of Nazi persecution with #everynamecounts. Millions of documents from our archive can now be digitized on an online platform. Each one contains important information about the fates of the victims. Volunteers enter names, dates, and place names in a database.

The world’s largest digital archive on the victims of Nazi persecution grows larger with every new piece of information they add. People can use the digital archive to conduct simple research on individual fates or to work on highly specialized research projects. However, its primary purpose is to serve as an open and permanent place of remembrance for the millions of people who were persecuted by the Nazi regime.

The #everynamecounts challenge

To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2023, the Arolsen Archives and their partners launched a global #everynamecounts challenge. Ably assisted by our volunteers, we digitized tens of thousands of documents within the space of one week. The challenge focused on the so-called prisoner registration cards issued by the SS in the Stutthof concentration camp. Lilith, our social media officer, used posts on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to explain how crowdsourcing works.

Über 15.000 Freiwillige sind dem Aufruf Over 15,000 volunteers took part in the challenge. Students were not the only ones keen to help – they were joined by volunteers from 160 institutions and companies that included Reporters Without Borders, the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt, and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Working together, the volunteers exceeded all our expectations and digitized almost 70,000 names of victims of Nazi persecution on the #everynamecounts platform.

10000

hours were invested in digitization by the volunteers during the challenge

Support from high places for #everynamecounts

Claudia Roth, Germany’s Minister of State for Culture and the Media, took part in #everynamecounts during the crowdsourcing challenge we launched at the beginning of 2023. She also visited the Arolsen Archives in March 2023 to get to know our staff, learn more about our comprehensive archive and our campaigns, and pledge her support.

#everynamecounts is a form of forward-thinking remembrance that deserves our strong support. This is a unique digital memorial that anyone can help to build. Everyone who takes part is making a very real contribution to keeping the memory of the victims alive, making their fate more visible across the globe, and making it more relatable for younger people in particular –and they are making a firm stand against hatred and agitation, against antisemitism and racism at the same time.

Claudia Roth, Minister of State for Culture and the Media

3,3 Mio.

documents have been processed (2021 – 2023)

120,000

volunteers have taken part (as of December 2023)

New crowdsourcing tool

At the beginning of 2023, we launched a new platform that makes it particularly easy for newcomers to get started with #everynamecounts. A user-oriented input form and our own special indexing tool make working with historical documents much easier. The tool was developed with a special focus on the needs of the younger generation and occasional users. It makes #everynamecounts accessible to all, as users do not need any prior knowledge of the digitization process or the historical context.

#everynamecounts: Ohrdruf – A forgotten concentration camp

In May 2023, hundreds of volunteers took part in a special week of remembrance in Thuringia titled “#everynamecounts: Ohrdruf – A forgotten concentration camp.” They digitized documents containing the names of more than 30,000 prisoners imprisoned in Ohrdruf concentration camp near Gotha in Thuringia during the Nazi era. Although around 10,000 people died in the camp, it remains largely unknown today. Local businesses, associations, and schools helped keep the memory of the victims alive by working on the documents on the #everynamecounts platform.

The week of remembrance was launched as a joint initiative of the Friedenstein Castle Gotha Foundation, the Arolsen Archives, and the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials. A virtual memorial site for the former concentration camp is currently under development as part of a project titled “Deutsche Erinnerungslücke KZ Ohrdruf” (German Memory/Remembrance Gap Ohrdruf Concentration Camp). In addition to campaigns and workshops, it also encompasses our digital learning module “Suspicious: A Landscape of Crime,” which is available on the new education platform of the Arolsen Archives.

Digital learning resources for Gen Z

According to a study we commissioned in 2022 titled “How does Gen Z think about the Nazi era?” young people are interested in the history of the Nazi period and would like modern, digital formats that allow them to explore the past in their own way. These findings guide as us we develop new, exciting interactive learning resources. The Education team at the Arolsen Archives design innovative resources that make learning about history attractive and provide inspiration for an active culture of remembrance. Their purpose is to enable young people to form opinions on social issues by engaging with the past. 

Digital education hub “and today?”

Our digital education platform “and today?” is a resource for historical and political education tailored to the needs of young people growing up in a digital world. Explorative learning modules (mini games) look at the history of the Nazi era as well as focusing on issues connected with marginalization and participation since 1945: How do Nazi-era crimes reverberate today? What would my life be like if I had a different passport? Why do people migrate – and always have done?

Students can play the mini-games on their own or in groups. The platform features special group functions and dashboards for the purpose. “and today?” provides a protected, non-judgmental space where young people use avatars to move around, collecting points as they go. Elements like dialog boxes, which can be used for anonymous polls, encourage students both to reflect on what they have learned and to talk to each other about it.

Young people help develop content

We actively involve young people in the process of developing and expanding “and today?” That enables us to create digital educational resources that young people can really relate to and that encourage them to engage with history. In 2023, several classes from schools all over Germany had the opportunity to test the platform already and give us their feedback.

Explore Jewish life in Berlin with a smartphone

“Marbles of Remembrance” was added to the berlinHistory app in 2023. Five multimedia walking tours take participants to locations where Jewish life took place in Berlin and tell the stories of schoolchildren in the Nazi era. They were primarily designed for young people aged 14 and over and for school groups, but adults and families also enjoy them. Interactive functions promote self-directed engagement with the Holocaust and with Berlin’s urban history and the destruction of Jewish life there.

“Kein Thema”: history on TikTok

We successfully launched a new channel titled “Kein Thema! Geschichte ist jetzt” on YouTube and TikTok at the end of 2022. (The provisional English title is “Talk about it! History is now!”). By the end of 2023, we had already posted a total of 148 videos. All three formats – “Germany vs. Drittes Reich” (street polls), “Keine Geschichte” (interviews) and “Nazi Deutsch für Anfänger” (explanatory videos) – are aimed at Gen Z. In 2023, 33% of viewers were aged 18-24. “Kein Thema!” raises awareness of antisemitism, racism, and marginalization and promotes civic engagement. The channel also aims to act as a counterweight to the abundance of right-wing content on social media platforms.

880000

views for “Kein Thema! Geschichte ist jetzt!” in 2023

Speaking out against right-wing extremism

The German government supported “Kein Thema” in 2023 as part of an initiative against right-wing extremism and racism. The videos received a lot of positive feedback. Many users were surprised to learn that ideas from the Nazi era still influence our everyday lives today. However, our young presenters and guests often received upsetting hate comments in response to the content on our channels. We always report incidents of this kind, and we also educate our users on how to deal with online hate.

180000

euros of funding provided by the German government for “Kein Thema! Geschichte ist jetzt!” in 2023

Wide reach through social media

Six social media posts per day

In addition to the videos on our “Kein Thema!” channel, the Arolsen Archives have continued to make intensive use of social media to highlight important issues. In 2023, we used Facebook, Twitter, X, Instagram, and TikTok to post numerous appeals for information, tell the stories of people who suffered persecution, report on family reunions, and draw attention to current forms of racism.

2,300

posts on all platforms (2023)

11,500

new followers (2023)

400,000

interactions with our posts (likes, comments, etc.)

30 Mil.

impressions (how many views our posts received)

Record year for #StolenMemory

#StolenMemory is all about the last possessions of victims of the Nazi regime. All the things concentration camp prisoners had with them when they were arrested – jewelry, photos, everyday objects – were confiscated by the SS. The personal effects of over 2,000 former prisoners are still stored in our archives. We want to return these mementoes to their families. The #StolenMemory campaign and exhibition calls on volunteers all over the world to help us find the families concerned.

Thanks to the incredible support of our volunteers, our tracing team managed to return more items in 2023 than in any other year since the campaign was launched in 2016. Helpers in Poland, France, and the Netherlands were particularly active.

180

families had items returned to them in 2023

#StolenMemory in France

In June 2023, a #StolenMemory container set off on a tour through France with an exhibition about the fates of former prisoners whose effects are stored in the archives. Funding for the traveling exhibition came from the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. The first stop was in front of the Panthéon in Paris. Afterwards, the exhibition traveled to nine other cities. Thanks to the tour, #StolenMemory received a lot of attention at local level – in total, volunteers found 40 families in France in 2023.

European tour

Our four #StolenMemory exhibition containers toured Germany, Poland, Belgium, and France in 2023. They traveled to 53 different locations, presenting the personal effects of former prisoners from these countries whose relatives are yet to be found. We also tell the stories of items that have been successfully returned to families. Cooperative projects with local institutions, such as schools and associations, give local people the opportunity to work with biographies and documents and search for traces of the families themselves.

Personal effects returned in Poland thanks to efforts of young people

As part of a cooperative project with the German-Polish Youth Office, school groups from Poland and Germany also regularly participate in #StolenMemory. In May 2023, students met in Warsaw to present Tadeusz Stramko with a necklace that belonged to his mother Marianna Miedzinska. The young people had found him through Facebook.

New animated film

As well as providing educational materials for download, the #StolenMemory website also offers fascinating insights into the campaign – short animated films with supplementary web stories and video interviews with relatives focus on the fates of specific individuals. In 2023, we released our fifth animated film and web story. It tells the story of Zakhariy Kistechok, a Ukrainian who was deported to Bavaria as a forced laborer and who died there under unexplained circumstances.

#LastSeen goes online

Pictures of Nazi deportations

The National Socialists deported hundreds of thousands of people from the German Reich between 1938 and 1945. Despite the huge numbers deportations, surprisingly few photos have survived. “#LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi Deportations” is a partner initiative that saw us join forces with four other institutions to collect known and forgotten images and analyze them down to the last detail. The results of this research are presented on a digital platform.

In March 2023, #LastSeen went online with a digital image atlas and a discovery game. The partners also held workshops for young people and set up a digital lecture series on the topic of “Current research on deportation and photo history” as part of this project. The image atlas is undergoing continuous development.

The partners involved in the initiative

The Arolsen Archives launched #LastSeen with:
– House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site
– Institute for Municipal History and Remembrance
– USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research
– Center for Research on Antisemitism
The first phase of the project, which ran from 2021–2023, received support from the Education Agenda NS-Injustice, a project of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future. During the second funding phase, which lasts from 2023–2025, the Alfred Landecker Foundation is providing funding for #LastSeen.

Exhibition in a vintage truck

A #LastSeen traveling exhibition set off on a tour of various German cities in 2022 to draw attention to the initiative. The exhibition housed in the back of a vintage truck focused on pictures of deportations from specific locations and invited visitors to take part in the project. In 2023, the truck made its last three stops in Petershagen, Porta Westfalica, and Saarbrücken.

Support for archives and survivors of Nazi persecution in Ukraine

Aid network for survivors of Nazi persecution

The Arolsen Archives have been actively involved in the Aid Network for Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Together with the other members of the network, we are appealing for donations to help survivors and their relatives. In 2023, the network’s efforts were particularly successful, with almost 4,000 people in need receiving emergency financial aid and urgently needed relief supplies. Tamara S. from Mykolaiv was one of them. Born in 1933, she passed through several concentration camps as a child before being put to work as a forced laborer.

Support for Ukrainian archives

Russian attacks have damaged many archives in Ukraine. Important collections on the Nazi era and on persecution under the Stalin regime were among the material destroyed. This is why the Arolsen Archives began helping their Ukrainian partners to digitize their collections in 2022 already. In 2023, we conducted systematic interviews with representatives of archives in Ukraine. Our final report documented the extent of the destruction, identified the most urgent needs, and appealed for targeted support to protect the archives and collections that are at risk.

We hope you enjoyed reading our annual report!