Research project at Freie Universität Berlin documenting historic photographs of deportations in Nazi Germany nominated for prestigious online award
The #LastSeen image atlas, an international research project on the history of National Socialism developed at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg at Freie Universität Berlin, has been nominated for the Grimme Online Award 2024. The project, which is a collaboration between six prestigious international partner organizations, was nominated in the category "Wissen und Bildung" (Knowledge and Education). The Grimme Online Award is an annual prize presented to high-quality journalistic online initiatives. This year saw almost 1,000 nominations in total, of which twenty-seven have now been shortlisted.More than two hundred thousand people were deported from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945. Most of them were taken to ghettos and extermination camps across Nazi-occupied Europe. The aim of the "#LastSeen. Pictures of Nazi Deportations" project is to collect, research, and publish as many photos of these deportations as possible. The #LastSeen image atlas already contains more than 400 photos from thirty-three different locations showing the deportation of Jews and Roma people, as well as people with disabilities. Almost all the people in the pictures were murdered. The team behind the project has been able to identify 270 individuals to date, and tell their stories at https://www.lastseen.org/ .
The photos show how thousands of persecuted Jews, Sinti, and Roma people were forced out of their homes and escorted to specific gathering places where they were searched, demeaned, and forced to wait before being loaded into trains. Deportations took place all’over Germany - and in broad daylight. The photos also show how, in addition to the Gestapo, police, and SS officers, local clerks, doctors, and business owners also helped with the deportations, with neighbors and passers-by watching or even participating themselves.
The aim of the #LastSeen project is to collect and research all remaining photos of these deportations. They represent some of the most significant and irrefutable sources we have of National Socialist crimes. All photographs are extensively researched before being published online at https://atlas.lastseen.org/en. The online image atlas serves as both a digital image collection and interactive exhibition. A unique feature of the project is that the images tell their own stories. Tags on the photos draw the user’s attention to specific elements - luggage tags, a child’s stuffed animal, or a certain location. This enables the individual stories of the people in the photos to be told.
The nomination committee for the Grimme Online Awards said: "The idea behind #LastSeen - creating an image atlas of photographs of deportations across Nazi Germany from 1938-1945 - is unusual yet simple. The immediacy of the candid photographs makes the horror of these racist persecutions all the more real."
#LastSeen project manager Dr. Alina Bothe from the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg at Freie Universität Berlin underscored the significance of the nomination: "The Grimme Online Award is Germany’s most prestigious award for digital content. We are honored to be nominated in the ’Knowledge and Education’ category alongside so many exceptional projects. It is our aim to make fundamental research available to interested members of the public in real time. This nomination is a sign that we are on the right track. Academic research should not just be restricted to the ivory tower. With the right idea, you can make research results available for all - something that is important for a democratic society."
The Latin words veritas, justitia, and libertas, which frame the seal of Freie Universität Berlin, stand for the values that have defined the academic ethos of Freie Universität since its founding in December 1948.
