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Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
00:00:06:04 - 00:00:27:10
Speaker 1
Hey, it's Matthew Cudmore, and welcome to story by the Stone. Today we're joined by Miriam Friedman, project lead at the center for the Every Name Counts digital Memorial. This world class project, in partnership with the Arolsen Archives, has engaged tens of thousands of volunteers and artificial intelligence to index the world's largest collection of data on the victims of Nazi persecution.
00:00:27:12 - 00:00:51:05
Speaker 1
Join us as we discuss how this landmark project turns historical records into searchable acts of remembrance, and why making these individual stories available to a global audience is a modern responsibility. Miriam, it was such a pleasure to have you share more about this important project on the show. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in.
00:00:51:07 - 00:01:05:17
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Story Behind the Stone, a show where we talk service, sacrifice and story. My name is Matthew Cudmore with Memory Anchor. I'm so pleased to welcome to the show today. My guest Miriam Friedman. Project lead with every named counts at Accenture. Welcome to the show today.
00:01:05:19 - 00:01:17:10
Speaker 2
Thanks for having me. I've, I've spent the last seven years at Accenture working on innovation strategy at large. And that means just helping teams bring new ideas into the world. And so really excited to be talking about our Every Team Counts project today.
00:01:17:11 - 00:01:25:03
Speaker 1
It's such an inspiring project. Lots to dig into today. If we could just start with just a little bit about you, who was Miriam and what brought you to work?
00:01:25:04 - 00:01:48:20
Speaker 2
Yeah, so about five years ago, my colleague Ian Lever told me that he was working on this effort, to use cutting edge technology to index records from the victims of Nazi persecution. And for me, as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors on one side and a World War Two veteran on the other, it was a topic that I was immediately drawn to, and it felt serendipitous and kind of like a responsibility.
00:01:48:22 - 00:01:58:11
Speaker 2
So it kind of felt like, for me, a gift to be able to turn this side of innovation into remembrance. So really, really grateful that I got involved.
00:01:58:16 - 00:02:02:02
Speaker 1
Tell me a little bit about the goals of the project at the core.
00:02:02:03 - 00:02:26:06
Speaker 2
The goal is really just to turn records into a form of remembrance, one name at a time. We're filling a gap, and in particular it's how do we make Holocaust era documentation real for people? So the documents exist, but a lot of it is hard to search, hard to access, and most importantly, still feels like history happened to millions of people and not a single person, not a single name.
00:02:26:06 - 00:02:43:04
Speaker 2
What we do it, every name counts is help make some of those original documents searchable. This means that for everyday people who might not have a prior connection to the topic, they get to sit and spend time with a life, a record, a name, and become part of preserving that.
00:02:43:08 - 00:02:46:21
Speaker 1
It's a huge project. Tell us a little bit about how it came together.
00:02:46:22 - 00:03:11:09
Speaker 2
A project that started in Covid when people were remote and craving some form of meaning. So we began with volunteering, at the Arolsen archives, virtual site for every named counts and for those that don't know, the Arolsen Archives has the largest collection of documents on the victims of Nazi persecution. They have about 110 million documents and objects that are part of their collection, which is housed in our office in Germany.
00:03:11:11 - 00:03:36:04
Speaker 2
And so we realized by partnering with them and volunteering on that effort, that we had this incredible technology organization behind us. And how cool would it be to be able to combine technology? And this first past using that technology with final human paths, so that the volunteers weren't just kind of replacing history or writing over history, but restoring their access to it.
00:03:36:05 - 00:03:43:23
Speaker 1
Tell me a little bit about the scale of things. The massive numbers involved, some of the challenges that you were tackling and have tackled as part of the project.
00:03:44:03 - 00:04:07:15
Speaker 2
Lots of kind of general challenges involved with a project of this scale. We have about 2.7 million documents that the archives granted us access to work with, and we were able to take those in and try to kind of organize them so that we can tell which documents were similar so that we can apply this layer of technology over it.
00:04:07:15 - 00:04:38:08
Speaker 2
Right. Optical character recognition, AI. And so in that process, we were able to validate, a big subset of those, about more than half of those documents were able to be processed. And automatically validated for the documents that the I wasn't sure that it got right. We worked with historians at Aaronson to understand what those confidence thresholds looked like, how confident would the I have to be to be able to automatically validate versus pass it to, a volunteer for an additional layer of validation?
00:04:38:08 - 00:04:50:23
Speaker 2
We were able to to narrow that number down to about half. And so now we leverage this incredible community of volunteers to be able to work on that smaller subset of documents and create that additional layer of validation.
00:04:51:02 - 00:04:56:16
Speaker 1
How many years, how many person hours do you think this has saved across all that work? 50%. It's incredible.
00:04:56:18 - 00:05:19:15
Speaker 2
We haven't done the math to say how many hours it necessarily takes because each person spends a different amount of time on the documents. So whereas previously, folks were manually indexing these documents depending on how much information was on a single document, that could take a varied amount of time. And then beyond that, people just interact and engage with these documents differently.
00:05:19:17 - 00:05:49:23
Speaker 2
Somebody might spend a lot of time just making sure that they are reflecting on the information on the document, looking at the person's birthday, saying their name out loud, really participating in an effort of remembrance in its most holistic form. Whereas other folks might feel like just submitting more records is an even more important act. And so what we really have here is kind of three general goals as part of our larger effort.
00:05:50:00 - 00:06:17:20
Speaker 2
The first is remembrance. How can we participate and remembrance, of these individuals who might not have anyone living to remember them? And so just kind of looking at each of these documents is really valuable. The second is learning. So no matter what folks come into this effort with whether they have family members who were affected or whether they never learned about the topic formally, we hope that they can learn something meaningful by looking at these original documents.
00:06:17:20 - 00:06:28:14
Speaker 2
And the third is this reflection. So how can we become more empathetic people and more reflective at large by participating in this really selfless volunteering effort?
00:06:28:15 - 00:06:31:18
Speaker 1
What is the project doing with digital that wasn't possible before?
00:06:31:19 - 00:06:53:14
Speaker 2
It's a really interesting question, because folks right now who are looking at a memorial are required to physically go to the memorial for the most part. And so that means that you need to have a Holocaust museum or a Holocaust exhibit that's close to you, right? The average person is not going to travel a thousand miles to go visit a memorial site.
00:06:53:16 - 00:07:22:17
Speaker 2
And so that means that most people that are interacting with the topic and visiting are folks that have some familiarity with the topic. So by making this digital and making it really accessible overall, right. So we have some features in it that are like translation or visualization features and so that enables folks who have no knowledge of the topic, no experience learning about the Holocaust in the past to really engage an encounter in a meaningful and real way.
00:07:22:21 - 00:07:44:11
Speaker 2
And so what that's looked like in the past is that, for example, our largest event has been a single event that had over a thousand folks in the Philippines. And the Philippines doesn't have any physical Holocaust museum or memorial. And so those folks would have had to travel quite far to be able to engage with a memorial like this.
00:07:44:11 - 00:07:51:07
Speaker 2
And so by making it virtual, they have a really meaningful way to be active and in remembrance and in the memorial.
00:07:51:07 - 00:07:55:09
Speaker 1
And what are you hearing from members of the public that have had the chance to visit?
00:07:55:13 - 00:08:14:03
Speaker 2
A lot of folks like me don't know that documents like this exist. So I'm the granddaughter, as I mentioned, of survivors, and I had no idea that I could access documents on my family. And so the folks that have family members that were affected are just learning simply that they can find documents like this on their family members.
00:08:14:05 - 00:08:41:23
Speaker 2
And that creates this kind of really natural, organic connection between them and a family member who might have passed away before they were born, or who maybe was a little bit more tight lipped about sharing that story because it was a tough one to share. And then even beyond that, folks that might not have had a connection but find the history to be really interesting and meaningful and important, are now able to find these documents and really put a name to them.
00:08:41:23 - 00:09:01:08
Speaker 2
Right? So instead of it being this opaque, really difficult thing to access, the large number of a loved 11 million victims of Nazi persecution, it becomes more real. So instead of it being 11 million victims, it's, you know, Sarah was a victim of Nazi persecution. This is her name. This is her story. These are the camps that she was deported to.
00:09:01:13 - 00:09:07:17
Speaker 2
This is when she was born. This is her last known address that takes it to a really new, different, meaningful level.
00:09:07:17 - 00:09:13:02
Speaker 1
Is there a particular story that you've come across in your history working on this project that really resonated with you?
00:09:13:06 - 00:09:32:04
Speaker 2
The first is that early on, a volunteer actually based in Australia came and she said, I want to be part of this. And she started to champion the effort. And that was no small thing in our early days, and we were still working out the kinks of the platform and really, bringing it to a mass audience.
00:09:32:08 - 00:09:55:10
Speaker 2
And we didn't learn until a couple of years later that her father was actually a member of the Hitler Youth, and she had a really difficult time coming to terms with that. And this was her way of coping with that history and that part of her family that she really work to bury. And so she was really honored to be able to take part in this in a way that was giving back.
00:09:55:12 - 00:10:24:14
Speaker 2
So that's one the second story that really left an impact on me is a story of a woman based in France. She, after her father passed away, saw some documents that suggested that maybe he was a victim and maybe his family were victims of Nazi persecution. She was able to, through the Appleton Archives website, do a little bit more research and digging and find a lot of records that refer to these family members who were victims.
00:10:24:16 - 00:10:44:05
Speaker 2
And she felt it was such a core part of her identity that she went so far as to actually change her last name to honor those victims and the family members who perished. It really affected her identity in such a fundamental way that she meaningfully did something about it and changed her whole persona. That's something that really spoke to me.
00:10:44:06 - 00:10:49:14
Speaker 1
How are you meeting the challenge of reaching next generations? I might feel a little bit of disconnect.
00:10:49:15 - 00:11:14:12
Speaker 2
First and foremost, it's important to put some of those studies that you sometimes read in the news into context. So first of all, let's let's just think about the numbers today. The number of Holocaust survivors is is shrinking at a really alarming rate. So the, one of the most published studies from the claims conference released a statistic that said that last year there were 220,000 Holocaust survivors that were still alive.
00:11:14:12 - 00:11:40:21
Speaker 2
And today there are about 196,000. And so each year, the number shrinks at a faster rate. And so there's really this need to understand, to memorialize, to hear those stories today. And so oftentimes when I hear speakers, especially in recent years, they'll say something along the lines of just share my story with one other person. And so that's that's what we try to to share with our volunteers.
00:11:41:01 - 00:12:03:18
Speaker 2
If you just tell one other person about this effort that these documents exist, they'll be able to see something firsthand. They'll be able to know these stories, especially today, while there are still those 196,000 Holocaust survivors who could tell their story firsthand. And then, you know, thinking about that third pillar that I mentioned or a reflection, how do we reflect on remembering these stories?
00:12:03:18 - 00:12:20:15
Speaker 2
How do we make it meaningful and human? You know, when there might not be any physical survivors left? So thinking, you know, how do we index, how do we record? How do we remember, how do we tell those stories? Is, I think, a really important problem that we're trying to at least partially solve.
00:12:20:18 - 00:12:23:12
Speaker 1
How can the public access this project?
00:12:23:13 - 00:12:45:09
Speaker 2
The easiest way is just to type in and search. Every name counts. Accenture URLs and archives. There are lots of resources that make it kind of accessible and understandable. So we have some videos and case studies that are publicly accessible where you can learn more and then always happy to connect and share more details and help get that volunteering started.
00:12:45:11 - 00:12:46:06
Speaker 2
If folks are interested.
00:12:46:11 - 00:12:50:15
Speaker 1
How is this project affected you personally as the descendant of survivors?
00:12:50:16 - 00:13:33:05
Speaker 2
So unfortunately, I never met my grandparents who were survivors, and I never knew how to come to terms and really honor their memory. The fact that I'm able to participate in an effort like this and bring it to so many people is really, I recognize, a great honor and privilege. I'm really glad and really fortunate that I'm able to facilitate the learning of all of these different stories to folks across the globe, and that means folks who have families that are survivors like mine, but also folks who don't have any connection to the topic and are able to just remember somebody that they otherwise would have never encountered.
00:13:33:11 - 00:13:57:05
Speaker 2
So one of the questions that we often ask at the end of our sessions is, what does it mean to remember someone that you never met? How do you do that? Why do you do that? And I think that just the process of thinking about that question allows us to be more reflective individuals, more empathetic, more humble and I think it's just a really important and euthanizing process to take part in.
00:13:57:05 - 00:14:04:06
Speaker 1
What does the future hold for the project, and are there any plans for expansion or any new applications of technology.
00:14:04:08 - 00:14:23:14
Speaker 2
That kind of number one, thing for us is really just how do we humanize this and how do we enable learning in the most robust way? So right now we have, a number of really critical features on the platform that enable folks to learn about an individual story. So part of it is the translation that's available on these cards.
00:14:23:14 - 00:14:51:15
Speaker 2
So folks can understand the story in English, even if they're non-German speakers. Another part is, a map feature that allows you to visualize what the path of persecution was. If there are different locations listed, some of the things that we're working on now are just creating some more connective tissue. So what made it look like if you were able to see a story that was recorded of somebody else who was in the same camp, how can you start to understand that story and again in a more robust way?
00:14:51:19 - 00:14:59:19
Speaker 2
So really kind of trying to tie those pieces together so that the remembrance can be even deeper than just looking at a single document.
00:14:59:23 - 00:15:03:00
Speaker 1
So the public how do they stay up to date on the developments with the project?
00:15:03:00 - 00:15:15:16
Speaker 2
Continue to be aware of the information on the Arolsen Archives website and to continue searching for every name counts. Accenture Arolsen archives. That will have the latest information that's most up to date.
00:15:15:19 - 00:15:24:10
Speaker 1
Miriam. So grateful for the chance to chat with you about this incredible project over so many years, so many lives affected, and it's so special.
00:15:24:10 - 00:15:43:01
Speaker 2
I just wanted to close with a quote from The Ethics of Our fathers other. And so that one is you're not obligated to complete the work, but you're not free to walk away from it. And I feel like this really speaks to the work that we're doing on the project. It's bigger than one person, and that's why doing it is so important.
00:15:43:01 - 00:15:58:14
Speaker 2
Each of us can take one small piece, document, name, just an act of attention, and doing that, we're able to bring someone's memory back into the world in a way that's not a statistic and really makes this person back into a human being. So thanks for having me
00:15:58:20 - 00:16:10:00
Speaker 1
Miriam Friedman project lead with Every Name Counts at Accenture. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
00:16:10:02 - 00:16:23:02
Speaker 1
Thanks so much for tuning in. Story. Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Rise Across America Radio Network on iHeartRadio. Audacity and tune in to search for wreath.
00:16:23:04 - 00:16:24:05
Speaker 1
Thank you for tuning in.