Insider: They survived the Holocaust. Then the online trolls came for them. . “Business Insider talked to three survivors and their families, and the granddaughter of a fourth survivor who died in 2022, who are committed to detailing their lives during the Holocaust on TikTok. While they’ve counteracted the toxic denialism that flourishes on the app, they’re also worried their stories will die with them.”
Digital Camera World: I shot photos with a 108-year-old Kodak camera lens to commemorate the soldiers of WWI . “During WWI soldiers were prohibited from using cameras and taking photographs of life in the trenches, however, many still did. They did so by using a small compact camera called the Kodak Vest Pocket film camera that was easy to conceal, and later became known as ‘The soldier’s camera’. Tom Calton, a photographer based in Peterborough, UK, has repurposed its otherwise fixed lens, adapting it to be used on a modern Sony mirrorless camera…”
Government of Canada: Access First World War service files in Collection Search. “In August 2018, Library and Archives Canada finished digitizing more than 600,000 service files of Canadians who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War. We’re pleased to announce that these files have been integrated into our main database, Collection Search, and are now available through a new landing page.”
University of Maine: Women in the Military Oral History Collection Available Online. “Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections has published oral history recordings from MF144, the “Women in the Military” collection of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. The full collection features recorded interviews with nearly 70 female military veterans serving between World War II and the Gulf War. Forty-nine of these interviews were published in the institutional repository, DigitalCommons@UMaine, in advance of Veterans Day, 2023.”
KYW Radio Philadelphia: New digital archive allows Black and Native families to connect with ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War. “The Museum of the American Revolution and Ancestry.com are working together on a new family history resource for people of Native American and African American descent. The museum acquired the Patriots of Color Archive in 2022. In it: nearly 200 rare documents — original muster rolls, pay vouchers, enlistment papers, discharge forms and more — originally belonging to Black and Native American soldiers who served during the Revolutionary War…. Ancestry.com digitized the collection and made it available online for free.”
The Post-Star: Fort Ticonderoga helping with genealogy . “The Ticonderoga Soldiers Project is a multi-phase initiative to make it easier for people around the world to connect with their family’s history at Ticonderoga. The fort’s museum staff are scouring recently-digitized archival documents including military orders, returns, court documents, letters, and diaries to identify and document the thousands of individuals who were stationed at the fort from 1755 to 1783, according to Fort Ticonderoga.”
Spotted via Google Alerts: British Civil Wars Memorial Database. “This database provides information about monuments, including memorials, plaques and information boards, located across the British Isles which relate to events concerning and key figures associated with the British Civil Wars 1639-1660. It also covers monuments located anywhere in the world relating to soldiers who served in the British Isles between 1639-1660.”
Kutztown University: Johannes Schwalm Historical Association Selects Kutztown University As New Home Of Digital Military Archives. “The Johannes Schwalm Historical Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching those German auxiliary troops (generically called Hessian) who remained in America after the Revolutionary War… Researchers from across the world can now access these digital archives through Kutztown University’s Rohrbach Library.”
Ynetnews: Israel declassifies massive archive to mark 50th anniversary of Yom Kippur War. “Israeli history comes alive today like never before as the Israel State Archives releases thousands of documents related to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, including materials from the months leading up to and following the conflict.”
New York Times: An Effort to Focus on Long Overlooked Roma Suffering in the Holocaust. “As many as a half million Romani people were killed by the Nazis, according to one estimate. A new database tells the story of that genocide and its impact on individual lives.”
Vox EU: New scores on old sores: The Morts Pour la France database on WWI fatalities in France. “As the war in Ukraine demonstrates, accurate numbers of those killed or injured in combat are hard to come by. This column describes the ‘Morts pour la France’ database, which contains individual-level data on the 1.3 million French fatalities during WWI. The database improves our grasp of geography (rural, poorer, less industrialised areas were harder hit), of battle-specific violence (the deadliest day in French history took place during the Second Battle of Champagne), and of conflict technology (the share of infantry decreased over time while the share of artillery increased).”
BBC: World War Two aerial photos opened to public for first time. “A collection of photographs taken during World War Two have been opened to the public for the first time. The aerial images were taken by the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) Photographic Reconnaissance units while stationed at bases across England in 1943 and 1944.”
J-Wire: Yad Vashem using AI to restore memory of Holocaust. “Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem announced Sunday that it has started using state-of-the-art AI technology including a new image detection capability to help comb through the world’s largest archive documentation of the Holocaust.”
Ekathimerini: A digital ‘atlas’ of the refugee imprint in Greece. “Anatolia Imprints… is an ambitious and labor-intensive project aimed at scientifically recording the economic, political and social impact of the decade-long wave of refugee arrivals in Greece that peaked in 1922-23. The website includes an interactive map that allows users to find out which part of Turkey their ancestors came from and where they settled in Greece – it covers all the refugees from agricultural communities and nearly half of those from cities – simply by inputting their full name.”
BBC: Website set up for Alderney Nazi death camp review. “A dedicated website has been launched, external to share the latest research as part of a review into the number of deaths in Alderney during World War Two. The island – along with the rest of the Channel Islands – was occupied by Germany and housed four forced/slave labour sites, including the concentration camp Lager Sylt.”
