The German National Library’s German Exile Archive 1933-1945 and the Arolsen Archives are announcing a new #everynamecounts challenge. Volunteers can take part in the crowdsourcing initiative from 4 to 17 November 2024. The aim of the challenge is to digitize the so-called expatriation card file (Ausbürgerungskartei) – and raise awareness of the names and stories of people who were stripped of their German citizenship.

From July 1933 on, the National Socialists used the so-called Expatriation Law to deprive tens of thousands of people of their German citizenship. This mainly applied to Jews and political opponents in exile. They lost their civil rights – which allowed the Nazi regime to confiscate their assets, too. From 1938 onwards, the National Socialists recorded the details of the people they stripped of their citizenship in a card file that was used as a reference work by all German embassies and consulates as well as in courts and other institutions in Germany.

The Deutsche Bücherei (now the German National Library) received a copy too. It contains over 36,000 cards with the names, dates of birth, occupations, and last places of residence of people who had their citizenship revoked. The Arolsen Archives and the Exile Archive have joined forces to keep their memory alive.

The Expatriation Law was also applied to celebrities like the writer, journalist, and actress Erika Mann, who went into exile in 1933. She found various ways to take a stand against the National Socialists right from the start, one of which was to found a political cabaret “Die Pfeffermühle,” which she took on a European tour. On June 8, 1935, the Nazi regime revoked her German citizenship, partly because of the opposition to Hitler she expressed in her work with the cabaret.

Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein was expatriated by the German authorities on March 24, 1934, when he was already living in the USA. An opponent of the Nazi regime, he had submitted an application for expatriation as soon as the National Socialists came to power in January 1933. However, the National Socialists had rejected his application – they were unwilling to let him deprive them of the opportunity to enact the expatriation of the famous scientist themselves.

#everynamecounts is a crowdsourcing initiative of the Arolsen Archives. Over 160,000 volunteers have already taken part by capturing data from historical documents. Their work contributes to the growth of the largest online archive and digital memorial to the victims and survivors of the Nazi era.

The German National Library wants to use the data digitized by the #everynamecounts volunteers to facilitate new research projects. It can be used to provide an overview of the people who were expatriated, their age distribution, occupations, or places of residence, for example.

Anyone with a few minutes to spare can help raise awareness of the fates of people who were stripped of their German citizenship. The documents in the “expatriation card file” are available online at https://everynamecounts.arolsen-archives.org/en. This platform is mobile optimized, so it works on a cell phone too.