“I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever"

(Isaiah 56,5)

The „Names” database is based on the declarations of death published from 1945 to 1950. However, these declarations only covered a fraction of the actual losses, because the data only went up to 1950, when the publication was discontinued.

The database underwent its first expansion before the Memorial Center opened, specifically with the incorporation of the official National Defense (Forced Labor Service) casualty records. This was based on the volumes edited by János Bús and Péter Szabó and published by the Institute and Museum of Military History, which document military casualties.

At the opening of the Memorial Center, 60,000 names were engraved onto the Memorial Wall of Victims based on the above-mentioned two sources.

Subsequently, questionnaires modeled on the data forms used by Yad Vashem were distributed to survivors and their descendants. So far, the Memorial Center has received 14,500 completed responses.

The respondents must state their name and contact information and affirm that they are providing the information to the best of their knowledge. However, their personal information (including their name) is not recorded in any database. This means that the system established at the Memorial Center allows access to the database exclusively from the victim’s perspective. This ensures that the Memorial Center does not, and cannot, process personal data that is protected under the Hungarian Data Protection Act.

The original approach (primarily in the territory of present-day Hungary) proved successful. Thanks to the processing of death certificates and military records, reliable data is available now for a significant proportion of the victims. This data has made processing new reports much easier.

In addition, we had access to two basic types of sources, both of which can be verified in the same way based on existing data. On the one hand, there were the lists of victims compiled in individual settlements, local communities, and on the other hand, there were the rather hastily collected lists from the camps.