EHRI Partner Crowdsourcing | Launch of Behind the Star Project
Commemorations such as Holocaust Memorial Day draw our attention to the existence and meaning of photographs in remembering the Holocaust. But on many occasions, we do not know the story of the persons portrayed. To be able to tell their stories, NIOD ImageLab has launched the crowdsourcing project Behind the Star. NIOD ImageLab is part of NIOD Institute for War, Holcoaust and Genocide Studies, coordinator of EHRI.
From May 1942, the wearing of a yellow fabric star – called the “Jodenster” in the Netherlands – was made compulsory by the German occupiers. This measure made it easy to identify Jewish people and was intended to stigmatize and dehumanize them. This new project focuses on photographs in which people are depicted wearing the yellow star sewn or pinned onto their clothing. With the help of the public, we want to identify people portrayed in the images, so that their stories can be told.
After 1945, numerous photographs from the war years were collected in archives. BeeldbankWO2 (WWII Image Bank) is the largest online photo archive documenting this period in the Netherlands, and contains approximately 300 images that depict people wearing yellow stars. These images reflect a fraction of the lives of those portrayed - in order to reconstruct and understand their life stories, it is essential to identify their names.
In this crowdsourcing project we aim to find the names of those portrayed in the photographs included in the Beeldbank WO2, as well as to identify information that can help us and others tell the stories of their lives.
Please help NIOD to find the names and stories behind the stars.
Everyone is invited to share as much information as possible about the persons depicted in these photographs. This includes their names, as well as other information, such as dates and locations where these photos were made. All information is welcome, even if it is not possible to gather all the data at once.
To see the photographs and to share information, please visit:
Would you like to know more about this project and its initiators? You can find it on this web page: www.niodimagelab.nl, or visit NIOD ImageLab on Twitter (@NIODImageLab) or Instagram (@NIOD.ImageLab).
Image: NIOD collection, ImageBank no. 96962. https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/detail/4e0d8804-025a-11e7-904b-d89d6717b464/media/8614680a-bb2b-2351-c3ac-9acfc02d1978.