PRESERVATION

Due to the passage of time and the poor quality of the paper on which the documents from 1939-1945 were prepared, they necessitate conservation work. The documents that were most at risk of destruction have been preserved in-house since the 1970s. Some documents that require more specialized procedures are sent to professional paper conservation workshops. The primary task of the Archives and Museum is to preserve and store documents in an appropriate condition. Documents that have been recently acquired, including original letters written from concentration camps, from former prisoners, their families, and collectors, frequently necessitate prompt intervention by a conservator. This highlights the importance of having a specialized and well-equipped laboratory. 

DIGITIZATION

Work on digitizing the Museum’s archival resources began in the early 1990s and has been carried out systematically until now. They are conducted in two directions. They aim to develop post-camp documentation based on Memoarch software, thus creating easy and quick access to the information contained therein and securing the archives by scanning them. The study focussed on: prisoner record books, transport lists, lists of prisoners transferred to other camps, lists of prisoners released from the camp, discharged from the hospital, death registers of the Civil Registry Office, lists of deceased prisoners buried at the “Zaspa” cemetery in Gdańsk, and personal questionnaires of prisoners. Digitization works also include iconography collections.