Internet users can now access detailed information about individuals deported to Auschwitz and the transport operations that brought prisoners to the camp.
The online tool currently contains data on 1,187 transports and 265,702 people, based on approximately 1 million documented entries.
The data comes from a wide range of archival sources and research studies, including the numbered lists of transports to Auschwitz, records of Jews deported from occupied France and Hungary, and letters from prisoners such as Leo Glaser.
Ewa Bazan, deputy head of the Analysis and Archival Information Section at the Auschwitz Museum, told the media: "The list of victims previously available on our website has now been expanded to include a chronology of transports to Auschwitz."
She added: "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."
The director of the Auschwitz Museum, Piotr Cywiński, said: “Restoring and presenting the identities of victims of Auschwitz is an extremely important part of our mission. The SS stripped victims of their humanity and also attempted to erase their identities by destroying evidence of the crimes."
Cywiński added, as quoted on the museum’s website: "To the camp administration, victims were just numbers. To us, each one had a name, a face and a story"
Piotr Cywiński. Photo: PAP/Łukasz Gągulski
According to Cywiński, "victims.auschwitz.org is far more than just a research tool; it represents a step-by-step construction of a memorial to the victims of Auschwitz. By allowing us to see individual lives and showing details of the transport system, it illustrates the monstrous scale of Nazi Germany's terror apparatus."
More than 1.1 million people were killed by the Germans at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
The victims were predominantly European Jews, but also included Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities.
January 27 will mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army.
Photo: Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum/EPA/www.auschwitz.org/HANDOUT
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Source: auschwitz.org