500,000 entries in the museum's collection of data!

The digital database, which is being created on the basis of original documents the so-called transport registers kept in German prisoners-of-war during the years of Second World War, already has 500 000 entries. It is an indispensable tool for efficient retrieval of information and reconstruction the individual fates of Polish soldiers, from their moment of surrender, through the time of  internment in successive camps, until the moment of liberation.

The data, that from the German camps came to the Wehrmacht Information Office for War Losses and Prisoners of War (Wehrmachtauskunftstelle für Kriegerverlusteund Kriegsgefangene), were taken oven by the Museum in 1970 from the Chief Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland. They are primarily used to answer incoming queries to the Museum.

The compilation of the digital equivalent of the traditional paper records has been conducted for many years by employees of our establishment and those who cooperate with us. The present database was initiated as early as 1994 with the "Oflag" POWs' registry system, which five years later contained nearly 13,000 records. An important stage in the development of the database was the Museum's involvement in 2007 in work on a nationwide database, which has been created since 2011 within the framework of the programme "Human Losses and Victims of repressions under the German occupation in the years 1939-1945".

Since that time, the Museum has been continuing the works on its own. And this is still the case today. This year's work is slowly coming to an end - the Museum's digital database already contains 500,000 entries, which is 83% of the ensemble on which it is based.

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