Europe News

Poland launches World War II victims database

Apr 9, 2009, 10:16 GMT

Warsaw - Seventy years after the outbreak of World War II, Poland will launch a database of some 2 million victims of the fighting, the daily Polska reported on Thursday.

The database will be available in the next several days on straty.pl, and will include the location and circumstances of the victims' death. Families or loved ones will have the option to add to the list of victims.

'The generation that lived through the war is already departing,' Jan Zaryn, of the co-sponsor Institute of National Remembrance, told the daily. 'That's why we're very much counting on the murdered victims' families.'

Officials hope that the database will grow to 4 million names within a year or two.

'Launching such a database is a big event,' historian Wojciech Roszkowski told the daily. 'Up until now, researchers trying to determine the number of victims always hit a wall. They weren't able to determine in various places how many were really died.'