Using data science to help us see human story

Data come in many forms. Sometimes they are little more than vast collections of numbers. At other times, they are marriage certificates, photographs and diary entries that preserve the lives of people persecuted by the Nazi regime.

To professor of data science, Stefan Jänicke, the distinction matters. He wants his research to contribute to something meaningful.

Jänicke works with visualising complex data to make them easier to understand. For the past four years, he has headed the MEMORISE research project, which has developed digital tools to make Holocaust-related archives easier for the public to navigate and access.

“It matters what I, as a researcher, choose to devote my expertise to. I feel a responsibility to help people today recognise themselves in those who lived through Nazi persecution. Not everyone has the opportunity to visit the museums or archives, so we have worked to provide digital access to diaries, letters, drawings, photographs and documents belonging to people who were held in camps or prisons,” he says.

The results include projects about the Ferramonti internment camp in Italy, synagogues in Riga and Holocaust survivor Steen Metz, who was born in Odense. Read more in the fact box.

Jänicke is driven by a desire to ensure that the horrors of Nazism are never forgotten. The Holocaust serves as a reminder of what can happen when people are stripped of their humanity and denied the rights afforded to others. In his view, we must remain vigilant against any ideology that divides people into those who belong and those who do not.

29 new masters with a deeper appreciation of the human story behind the data

“I worry when people talk about ‘the others’, saying they should be sent home or sent away. These are human beings. Every one of them has their own story, their own circumstances. I think we too often fail to see the individual behind the label”, he he says, adding:

“History shows how dangerous it can become when society is divided into groups whose members no longer see one another as fellow human beings. In both the US and Europe, we have politicians who openly talk about deportation and remigration. That concerns me.”

At SDU, 10 researchers and 29 Master’s students have been involved in the MEMORISE project, and Jänicke believes that the experience has left a mark on all of them. Visits to both well-known and lesser-known memorial sites, archives and museums across Europe have shaped MEMORISE’s team of newly graduated Master’s students. They have now embarked on careers as computer scientists specialising in visualisation, carrying with them a deeper appreciation of the human stories behind the data. Jänicke is proud of them.

I read about families torn apart

One of his own areas of focus has been the creation of a dataset about a group of artists who were held in concentration camps: When were they born? When did they die? Which camp were they held in?

“Along the way, I read fragments of information about these people. One had two children. Another had a wife. I read about families that were torn apart and children who were sent to Auschwitz. It is now up to us to show that something like this can happen again if we vote for politicians who do not show empathy for their fellow human beings,” he says.

The conclusion of the MEMORISE project also brings Jänicke’s work on visualising the horrors of Nazi Germany to an end. The purpose of that work has been to help us understand that the victims were real people. His commitment to humanity, however, does not end with the project.

Responsibility for the crisis we are facing

He would like his next project to involve visualising individual lives as well, perhaps the lives of soldiers.

These could be both historical and contemporary stories, as he believes that all soldiers in combat share some of the same appalling conditions and that we need to be able to see and feel what they experience.

“To be completely honest, I think some of the work done by some of my fellow researchers is irrelevant rubbish. But we researchers have a responsibility to act responsibly and help solve the crises we are facing. That is important,” he concludes.