The ‘Every Name Matters’ project from the Kazerne Dossin aims to remember the almost 26,000 people that were interned at this location before being transported to concentration camps, mainly to Auschwitz–Birkenau.
Kazerne Dossin is a memorial, museum and documentation centre focusing on the Holocaust and human rights. Besides their permanent remembrance exhibition, since 2024, Kazerne Dossin launched a project to give name to all the people who were interned at the Kazerne before being deported mainly to Auschwitz–Birkenau.
This project has been called ‘Every Name Matters’.
The aim is to bring forward the identity of the victims beyond numeric figures in a quest to give them back their names.
For that, Kazerne Dossin is committed to record the full names and age of death of the 25,843 people who were recorded on the transport lists destined for the concentration camps.
The project therefore needs of a total of 25,843 volunteers to successfully carry its aims out. Currently as of 2024, it is only 37.5% completed to date. It is foreseen that, by 2026, all the names will have been commemorated and remembered by the project in the museum’s memorial area.
Once a volunteer joins the project, they are allocated one of the personnel stories. Some of the criteria that are followed in the process are: sharing the same name and or surname, having been born in the same date or place, or being the same age as the victim.
This helps to establish a stronger connection with the people who were once in the Kazerne. The museum then also offers the possibility to learn more about the life of that person providing data about their family or arrival and departure dates from the Kazerne.
In addition to that, the museum displays the picture (if available) of every person in a large wall. The majority of the pictures are in black and white, indicating that that person didn’t survive. There are, however, a few cases in which the pictures have sepia colour. This indicates those who could eventually return home.
Only 5% of the people who were once in the Kazerne survived the holocaust.
