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New online tool allows searching for information about Auschwitz victims and transports to the camp

On victims.auschwitz.org, you can search for information about people deported to the German Nazi camp Auschwitz, as well as learn details about most transports to the camp. Currently, it contains data on 1,187 transports and 265,702 people, based on approximately 1 million document entries.

“Restoring and presenting the identities of victims of Auschwitz is an extremely important part of our mission. The SS men stripped the victims of their humanity, but also – by destroying the evidence of crimes – they tried to erase their identities. For the camp administrations victims were just numbers. For us, they all had their own name, face and history. Victims.auschwitz.org is much more than just a research tool. In fact, it is a step-by-step construction of a memorial to the victims of Auschwitz, which not only allows us to see individual people, but also – by showing the transport system – illustrates the monstrous scale of the terror system of Nazi Germany,” said the Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński.

“The new website is a result of many years of work by our team of archivists and historians. We are able to use this modern tool largely due to the work done as part of the project “Resorting the identities of those deported and imprisoned in KL Auschwitz”. Part of our mission aims at preserving the memory of all those deported and imprisoned in the camp, meaning it is not only important for us to study archival documents, but also to make them available. I am greatly hopeful that it will not only serve researchers, but also those who want to learn and talk about the tragic fate of people in Auschwitz,” said Rafał Pióro, Museum Deputy Director, responsible, among other things, for projects carried out in the Archives.

“The list of victims that was available on our website has now been enriched with a chronology of transports to Auschwitz. A record of a single transport includes: the number of people deported, the range of numbers issued to men and women, and in the case of transports of Jews, the number of people murdered in the gas chambers immediately after selection – said Ewa Bazan, deputy head of the Analysis and Archival Information Section, responsible for the substantive side of the project.

Individual transports were linked to prisoners’ names and surnames according to the ranges of camp numbers issued during registration. This allows to assign information about a specific person to the transport.

Data regarding the transports are also presented on an interactive map.

“On the map, the marked places indicate where the deportations began. It illustrates the scale of transports to Auschwitz, aiming to make users aware of the scope and scale of deportations. Additionally, it helps to geographically locate places, giving users, for example, an understanding of which towns in their area were the scene of those tragic event – said Maciej Majcherek, creator of the page who is responsible for the IT side of the project.

The data comes from many archival sources and scientific studies. These include, among others: the numbered lists of transports incoming to KL Auschwitz Nummernwerzeichnis, information from Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945 by Danuta Czech, How many people died in KL Auschwitz by Franciszek Piper, lists of Jews transported from occupied France by Serge Klarsfeld, or publication by Ward Adriaens, Dr. Maxime Steinberg, Dr. Laurence Schram, Patricia Ramet, Eric Hautermann and Ilse Marquenie Mecheln-Auschwitz 1942-1944: The destruction of the Jews and Gypsies from Belgium. Data about the deported Jews from Hungary comes from memoirs collected by Prof. R. Braham, letters of the prisoner Leo Glaser, or lists of transports prepared by Mikulas Gaško compiled by Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, head of the Museum Research Center.

“To the new system we also added data about transports from five districts in occupied Poland, which were gathered in the Memorial Books of Poles deported to KL Auschwitz published between 2000 and 2013,” added Ewa Bazan.

“The website is being created thanks to the cooperation of the Museum with volunteers and university students doing their internships at the Memorial. A huge thank you goes to the volunteers and interns who translate texts into English. This includes: students and teachers of the International British School from Kraków together with their history teacher Robert Nicholson, and university students of philology and linguistics. This cooperation would not be possible without the involvement of the Volunteering and Internships of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocuast, and the work on making this data available would continue for many more years,” said Anna Jawień, from the Analysis and Archival Information Section, coordinating translations into English.

“The data available on the new website are not yet comprehensive, as the process of gathering and updating them will take years to come. However, the tool is already so advanced that we decided to share it with the public in its current state. It will certainly be very helpful for the families of Victims, researchers, teachers, and educators dealing with the history of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Data on prisoners and transports will be supplemented as the work progresses,” said Dr. Krzysztof Antończyk, head of the Analysis and Archival Information Section, responsible for the cooperation with other memorials in this project.

“Importantly, other memorials and museums have already declared cooperation with us, including: Memorial de la Shoah from Paris. This will ensure that any information about the victim's name will be published with reciprocal links directing users to partner websites. This is a truly huge undertaking that goes beyond a strictly archival project,” emphasized Dr. Antończyk.

All persons wishing to support the development of the