“#LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi Deportations” is the result of cooperation between the Arolsen Archives and four partner institutions: the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, the Institute for Municipal History and Remembrance, Munich, the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Los Angeles, and the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the TU Berlin.
The Arolsen Archives are involved in a variety of digital remembrance projects. They range from the extensive online archive on victims and survivors of Nazi persecution through to initiatives like #everynamecounts that inspire volunteers from all over the world. #LastSeen is their latest project.
The Gestapo organized 61 “Eastern transports” and another 123 “elderly transports” to Theresienstadt from Berlin – with a total of more than 50,000 Jewish deportees. The Arolsen Archives hold deportation lists that document the scope of these crimes. We hope to be able to track down pictures of these historical events through #LastSeen.
The #LastSeen initiative appeals to members of the public to search for previously unseen contemporary photographs and film footage of Nazi deportations and help scholars identify the people, places and situations depicted. This often requires good regional knowledge and local research. We have put together a FAQ that explains how you can support us.
#LastSeen will bring together all photographs of deportations from the German Reich for the first time. Many of these pictures are already familiar, but they have never been published together. Even more photos are probably still hidden away in archives. Our FAQ covers everything archives need to know about the project. We look forward to working with you!