The digitization of concentration camp documents has also changed the work of the memorial archives. Today, research is usually no longer carried out in the magazine rooms, but in various databases. Search queries can sometimes clarify the fate of prisoners that previously seemed unsolvable.

The Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial began building a digital research platform on Nazi victims, the “Memorial Archives,” in 2012. The online accessible database shows at a glance all the documents and information available about a prisoner, which makes it easier to track, for example, prison routes. The “Memorial Archives” help the archive staff immensely in answering inquiries from relatives and researchers. Since 2020, there has also been a cooperation project with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to create a new database for the holdings of the Auschwitz concentration camp based on the “Memorial Archives”.

In order to show how the digitization of the archives helps to answer historical questions decades after the liberation of the camps, a project team from the two memorial sites has developed “Research Stories”. This is a digital platform for research stories. Using specific cases, employees of the Auschwitz Museum and the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial explain the sometimes detective methods they use every day to clarify the fates of prisoners. However, their descriptions also illustrate the fragmentary nature of possible findings, as many documents were destroyed by the SS when the camps were evacuated.

“Research Stories” allows people to participate in research and thus responds to the interest in many archive inquiries. Information has changed, not least because of online databases: anyone who contacts a memorial today has often already done their own research in advance. Scans of documents found online are therefore often attached to the requests. Relatives sometimes have a portrait of the person being sought or know something about the circumstances of the arrest. When you send photos, letters and personal documents to the memorial sites, you help to put a face to those who were persecuted and murdered.

The information available online has made research possible for everyone. However, those who do their own research often reach their limits. The databases of museums, archives and memorials are usually not fully accessible for data protection reasons. In order to understand found documents such as index cards, transport lists or personnel forms, special knowledge is also necessary. “Research Stories” therefore deals with topics that regularly recur in inquiries to memorial sites: How can the grave of a relative be found? Is it possible to find out how an inmate died? Why can I hardly find any documents? The website also provides advice for your own research and points to useful links and addresses.

“Research stories. Traces and Stories of Concentration Camp Inmates” is a digital offering from the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in three languages: Polish, English and German. The website will gradually be expanded to include additional research stories.