Nazi Archive has Millions of Victim Names - 19 April 2006

Washington Post

Nazi Archive Has Millions of Victim Names

By MATT MOORE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 19, 2006; 4:27 PM

BAD AROLSEN, Germany -- Row upon row of metal cabinets at the International Tracing Service hold the key to the lives _ and deaths _ of 17.5 million of Adolf Hitler's victims.

Much of it is simple, stark facts _ a name on a concentration camp death list _ while other information is more descriptive: accounts of mental illness, real or imputed homosexuality, medical records, even the presence of head lice.

Privacy concerns have held up the opening of the center's 30 million documents to historians and the public, a restriction that could end soon under pressure from Holocaust researchers and Jewish organizations.

In a key breakthrough, the German government said Tuesday it was ready to work with the United States on the issue, though no final agreement has been reached.

Maria Raabe, assistant to the center's director, said it will ultimately be up to the 11 countries that oversee the archive _ Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Britain and the United States. Their representatives meet May 16 in Luxembourg.

"It's there that a decision will be taken on opening the archives and in what way," she said. "We have very delicate and sensitive information about illness, homosexuality, dementia."

One card shows the name of a Frenchman taken to Norway and forced to work as a carpenter building a submarine pen for the German navy. Another lists a Hungarian said to suffer from schizophrenia. Another bears the name of a German imprisoned at Buchenwald for saying anti-Nazi slogans and freed on orders of the U.S. Army on May 7, 1945 _ the day the war ended.

Many of the records are registration documents, ID cards or lists. Yet they provide powerful testimony to the lives and deaths of those imprisoned, forced to work for German industry or killed in concentration camps during World War II.

The agency, which opened in 1943 in London and moved to Germany in 1945, helps relatives of Nazi victims discover their fates.

More than 50 million references to the victims have been catalogued, cross-referenced and, in most cases, digitally scanned to form a huge database. Some 150,000 requests were dealt with last year alone.

It is by far the most complete listing of those who suffered in World War II, said Udo Jost, archive manager for the International Tracing Service.

Some death camps "didn't have much use for records," Jost told The Associated Press. In some cases, documents were destroyed by the Nazis as the Russians advanced from the east and the Allies from the west.

Other camps were ardent record keepers. Mauthausen, in Austria, diligently recorded the deaths of its inmates, listing them by name, serial and prisoner number, as well as place and date of birth.

"It also shows how they died," Jost said, displaying the camp's Totenbuch, or Death Book, for 1942 and 1943. "These prisoners were killed every two minutes with a shot to the back of the head."

In a few hours, 300 were executed on April 20, 1942.

"That was Hitler's birthday. The camp commandant did it as a birthday gift for him," Jost said.

The Nazis documented everything from the mundane _ how many meals a forced laborer received _ to the horrific, describing prisoners' deaths in painstaking detail.

People requesting information about themselves or relatives are given priority, as do the elderly or sick, and those seeking information for legal settlements.

Still, it takes 3 1/2 years on average, Raabe said.

"Some are seeking information on relatives who were taken to Germany to work and then emigrated after the war to somewhere else," she said. "Others need to prove that they were in a concentration camp."

When a family member is seeking a lost relative, the agency tries to track down that person. Most times it is successful, but not everyone is eager to be found.

"When that happens, we notify them that we were not successful," she said, adding that the agency does not divulge confidential information.

Even advocates of opening the records to historical research or the public acknowledge the privacy issue.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany is "very much in favor of opening up the archive," said general secretary Stephan J. Kramer.

"Yes, we are concerned that personal information be treated carefully," he added, noting that Holocaust centers such as Israel's Yad Vashem have extensive experience balancing privacy concerns with researchers needs and can be trusted to handle the data carefully.

The issue has been debated for years, but German Justice Ministry spokeswoman Cristiane Wirtz said the treaties that govern the center made change difficult. "These treaties, which make possible the work of this archive, do not foresee that opening of the archives for research purposes. That is the legal problem," she said.

"We will have to wait and see what comes out of this assembly. The fact is that there have been intensive talks ... and we will have to wait and see whether all problems have been solved to the extent that we can actually open the archives for research purposes."

Several Holocaust scholars applauded Germany's decision to consider allowing wider access.

"We are pleased," said Iris Rosenberg, spokeswoman for Yad Vashem. Israel's Holocaust museum "believes that all information related to the Holocaust should be open to scholars and the general public."

"The opening of these records is an important step forward that will give the victims of Nazi genocide their names back," added David Marwell, director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. "The German government has found the appropriate balance of personal privacy and open access."

© 2006 The Associated Press

Times of London

Secret archives of Holocaust to be opened after 60 years From Roger Boyes in Berlin

ONE of the most comprehensive sources of information about Jews killed or lost in the Holocaust is to be thrown open to historians after an about-turn by Germany. For 60 years a wall of secrecy has surrounded the archive at Bad Arolsen in central Germany, which contains 50 million documents and the names of 17 million Nazi victims. Germany had claimed that opening the files would break its strict privacy laws. Now, under pressure from Holocaust researchers and the US, it has relented. As a result, the documents could be made available to help historians, family members and others to establish how the victims of the Holocaust met their fate. “This represents a really important step,” said Sara Bloomfield, director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She was speaking after a meeting with Brigitte Zypries, the German Justice Minister. The files — mainly German papers impounded by Allied forces — are a testimony to the Nazi obsession with documentary detail. Among the papers, stored in an old SS barracks, there are lice inspection reports from concentration camps and insurance policies signed by German companies when they took on slave labourers. The many documents form a remarkable mosaic that shows the lives and tribulations of Jews, slave labourers and other victims. The archive has been used since the war as a tracing service by the International Committee of the Red Cross. As Holocaust victims die out, the service has become less important. Even so it succeeds in reuniting dozens of families every year. The archive is supervised by 11 countries: the US, Britain, Belgium, Israel, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Luxembourg. The decision to open the files has to be approved by all 11. So far, Germany has been the main obstacle. As well as its privacy laws, there were also fears that the documents could leave the German state exposed to a myriad of lawsuits. The change of policy could see the release of digital copies of the documents. It has not yet been agreed whether they would be available online. Ms Bloomfield said: “We are losing the survivors and anti-Semitism is on the rise, so this could not be more timely.” Paul Shapiro, director of the museum’s centre for advanced Holocaust studies, said: “It makes it possible to learn a lot more about the fate of individuals and to learn a lot more about the Holocaust itself — concentration camps, deportations, slave-enforced labour and displaced persons.” Karol Fracapane, executive secretary of the taskforce for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, said: “This is about the memory of the most appalling event in human history and about respect for the survivors today. It is extremely important for the archives to become open as soon as possible and give survivors and their families relevant information before they die.” Now that Germany has bowed to pressure, the next step will be a formal decision in Luxembourg next month. Frau Zypries believes that the 1955 treaty limiting access to the archives could be revised within the next six months. DEATH LIST · Since its inception in 1943, the service has collected information on 17.5 million people in 50 million reference files · The archive has 25,000 metres (16 miles) of shelf space, 225,000m of microfilm and more than 100,000 micro files · Work is under way to digitise files, to make searches easier and to preserve the record · The centre has responded to 11 million requests and has a two-year backlog. It processes more than 200,000 inquiries a year · Files are not open for general research. A specific individual must be sought