Mobilisation – Queen Street, Auckland in 1914.
© Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tamaki Paenga Hira, D538 Q3.
Unknown photographer, 1914.
Online Cenotaph: an authoritative starting point for researchers
Online Cenotaph is New Zealand’s living memorial to those who served this country during times of international conflict.
It also commemorates New Zealanders who fought for other forces in conflicts in which our country was involved.
It provides an authoritative and easy-to-use starting point for families, schools, communities, researchers and people all over the world to explore and enhance the content held about New Zealand service personnel.
A memorial resource for the nation
Online Cenotaph is a resource for the nation – the gathering point for the personal and official memory of the people who served for Aotearoa New Zealand.
Developed by Auckland War Memorial Museum in association with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Online Cenotaph provides a lasting legacy of the WWI Centenary commemorations.
The biographies in Online Cenotaph have been developed in collaboration with memory institutions and community groups, large and small, across New Zealand and internationally.
Where we’re taking Online Cenotaph
A biographical database, whose content has been gathered over 18 years, Online Cenotaph pulls together information relating to individual service people from a huge range of sources such as embarkation, military service and other government records, newspapers and families. It will eventually provide a page for every person who has served our country in international conflicts.
Scope
Online Cenotaph primarily focuses on the people who served in Armed and ancillary support services in wars in which New Zealand had official involvement. A secondary focus is on creating records for those individuals involved in New Zealand’s internal wars or conflicts. Lastly, New Zealanders who contributed to other international conflicts, which New Zealand was not officially a part of, such as the Spanish Civil War, are legacy records which have been included but not actively researched.
A comprehensive online hub for commemoration
Online Cenotaph makes it possible for people in the community to enrich this national resource, ensuring its value to the people of New Zealand stretches far beyond the WWI Centenary period.
Our aim is for it to become the comprehensive online hub for New Zealand service personnel stories.
Your place to record personal war experience stories. While facts and figures remain an important part of Online Cenotaph, it is increasingly featuring the recording of personal war experience stories.
Online Cenotaph:
Is a work in progress, providing a rich biographical database of New Zealand service personnel
Enables people to contribute information, documents and photos, as well as the personal stories of the experiences of New Zealand service men and women.
Is a living online social space for enthusiasts, family, and researchers alike
Is a New Zealand research node linking with key international online sites.
Provides a home for increasingly rich New Zealand content, as more people in the community interact with the site and contribute content
Links to other information available on the web and joins the dots for every service person
Is a useful social history resource about New Zealand’s experiences in international conflicts.
Get started
Begin now by browsing our records by place, conflict, or family name. You can also build your own custom search query by linking together specific filters targeted to your research question.
Need more help? Read our research help page for tips and advice on how to get the most out of Online Cenotaph.
Help us enhance Online Cenotaph
If you find a connection with someone listed in Cenotaph you could help us enhance their record by submitting your information.