News
Digitalization and Access to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Archives
Each year, the Museum Digital Repository adds new records and documents to its holdings. At present, they consist of about 650 thousand personal records based on 70 document sets from the time when the camp was in operation. The names of many persons are repeated because they are entered differently in particular archival sets. Thus, in November 2009, the Museum Digital Repository contained 237 thousand discrete records with first and last names and birth dates. In other cases, the names or birth dates are missing, or the records are simply illegible.
However, the Repository is not merely preserving and storing; it is also, and above all, access. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we have come to expect increasingly broad digital access. Therefore, in 2009, the Digital Repository provided online access to sources that had previously been available only to Auschwitz Museum researchers. Almost 400 thousand individual records from the databases can currently be found at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum website (www.auschwitz.org). They reflect entries in records kept by the SS and now held in the Museum archives. All digital records containing first names, last names, and dates of birth of people deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau are now available online. New databases will supplement the online information in coming years. It should be borne in mind that these data represent transcriptions of original entries in wartime German records, and thus contain inaccuracies and errors. They are a basic source, and merit further refinement. The results of searches of the Digital Repository databases indicate the number of appearances (repetitions) of a given name in the documents, and can serve as the starting point for deeper analysis and searches.
In the future, the maintenance and expansion of the Digital Repository will be aided by a professional system, developed in cooperation with the Auschwitz Museum Information Technology Section, for the long-term storage of digital information and the automatic creation of backups. This is part of the Digitalization and Access to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Archives project, within the framework of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage’s Cultural Heritage/Creating Digital Cultural Heritage Resources program for 2009. The first stage of the project, completed in December 2009, envisioned the purchase of two IBM Power 6 servers, disk storage, LT03 tape drives, and the accompanying programming. The cost of the hardware (347,700 PLN) was covered by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage financing from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture (295,545 PLN) and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims Memorial Foundation (52,155 PLN). The building of the system is projected to last five more years, culminating in the consolidation of all the databases and digital images of documents (scans in loss-free formats) and artifacts in the possession of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The integration of the systems for the management of the electronic resources of the Repository, the Collections Department, the Conservation Department, and other Museum units will permit rapid access to historical information about persons, and also about the objects that were associated with them. This system will provide electronic copies of documents about deportees, along with scans of photographs, plans, and maps to aid in establishing the fates of individuals.
I am convinced that the work performed over the last 18 years by a dozen or more people is already not only a valuable historical resource, but also and above all an expression of our respect for the people, the victims, who were deprived of everything—even their names. I believe that this is a foundation that will serve future generations of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum staff in reconstructing an edifice of events built out of human stories. In this way, we will be able to do for them the one thing that is within our power—to rescue the history of their identities, their feelings, and perhaps even their hopes, from oblivion.
