The Names Project Antwerp has reached a new milestone to honor the fatalities of the World War II. Today the project team is launching a renewed list that contains 23,134 names of war victims who lived or died in Antwerp.

The Names Project Antwerp is the precursor to a new monument-memorial that will be built from 2024 on the Scheldt Quays near the Pilotage Service or Loodswezensite at the initiative of the City of Antwerp. The monument shows the names of the deceased war victims who lived or died in Antwerp. It is estimated that there are around 25,000 names.

Physical and digital monument

The Felix Archive – Antwerp City Archives inventories the names of these war victims. This concerns fatalities who belong to one of four defined victim groups: Holocaust victims, civilian victims of Nazi violence, civilian victims of military violence and military victims. 

They will be given a place on the monument on the Scheldt Quays. Together with the physical monument, a digital monument will also be developed on which the complete list of names – including additional data of the victims – will appear and the victims can be searched for and commemorated.

Additions and corrections

In anticipation of the digital and physical monument, a list of names was put online in the course of 2021 on the website of Antwerpen Herdenkt (Antwerp Commemorates), a platform to keep the memory of the Second World War alive. 

That list of names contained more than 19,000 names. In recent months, a lot of work has been done to supplement and correct this list. The updated list will be published on 11 November 2023 and contains 23,134 names.

The Felix Archive – Antwerp City Archives will continue to work on the list in the coming months. New names will appear and corrections will be made at regular intervals. Interested parties can consult the list of names and submit additions or corrections to the researchers in the Felix Archive – Antwerp City Archives via the website.

Mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA): “Since 2021, our researchers at the City Archives have done a lot of work to complete the names of Antwerp war victims. Their efforts have ensured that the end result is as reliable as possible, based on what we currently know. I am very grateful to them for that. But this project is not an archival research that stands alone. I would therefore like to once again warmly appeal to all interested parties to visit the Names Project website and check the names of victims and, if necessary, make improvements. In this way, together we can ensure that all Antwerp war victims will be commemorated with dignity and individually when the foundation stone of the Names Monument at the Pilotage Service is laid next year.”

More on the Names Project.