The Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (JMDR), predecessor of Kazerne Dossin, opened its doors in 1996. The museum was the result of a collaboration between the Jewish Central Consistory of Belgium and the Union of Jewish Deportees. Sir Natan Ramet, survivor of Auschwitz, the death marches and Dachau, was appointed president of the new museum. Apart from its commemorative, museological and educational assignment, the JMDR also had a historical assignment : to digitise all archival collections related to the Holocaust in Belgium and to make these documents available to the public. In 2008 the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance was reorganised and became, in 2012, Kazerne Dossin - Memorial, Museum and Documentation Center on Holocaust and Human Rights.

In 2005 honorary curator Ward Adriaens launched the Give Them a Face archival project. After negotiations with several ministries and the immigration authorities, the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (JMDR) received permission from Minister of Internal Affairs Patrick Dewael to digitise certain photos from immigration files, drafted by the immigration authorities. The portraits of all Jewish, Roma and Sinti deportees which passed through the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) in 1942-1944, were scanned to create the “Give Them a Face” portrait collection. Patricia Ramet, daughter of president Sir Natan Ramet, became project leader. Under her care more than 18,500 photos of deportees were digitized. In 2009, all of these were published in the four volume commemoration book "Mecheln-Auschwitz, 1942-1944". Since then, the JMDR and Kazerne Dossin were able to add more than 1,000 new photos, digging into other archival sources : municipal records, private and family collections, researchers, the index cards of the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst (Sipo-SD), Yad Vashem, the USHMM, the Relics collection stored at Kazerne Dossin… All photos in the Give Them a Face portrait collection are part of the commemoration wall which is part of the permanent exhibition at the Kazerne Dossin museum.

State Archives, Brussels ; Directorate-general War Victims, Brussels ; Yad Vashem, Jerusalem ; USHMM, Washington DC ; Relics collection stored at Kazerne Dossin, Mechelen ; researchers ; private and family collections.