Number: RS22638
Title: Opening of the International Tracing Service's Holocaust-Era Archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany
Authors: Paul Belkin, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division 
Abstract: On November 28, 2007, the International Tracing Service (ITS) opened its vast archives of materials on victims of Germany's National-Socialist (Nazi) regime to the public, granting direct access to the archives for the first time since their establishment shortly after World War II. Access to information in the archives was previously limited to victims of Nazi crimes and their descendants, and as recently as 2006, ITS had a recorded backlog of over 400,000 requests for information. As part of its May 2006 agreement to open the archives, the 11-nation International Commission overseeing ITS agreed to provide a digital copy of the collections to designated research institutions in Commission member states. To date, digital copies of the archives' Central Name Index of about 17.5 million names, and of some 13 million records documenting deportations to Nazi concentration camps, have been transferred to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Museum officials expect these documents to be accessible to the public by early 2008, and hope that all the ITS archives will be digitized and transferred to the museum by late 2010. Access to the archives has been an issue of ongoing interest to many Members of Congress.
Pages: 6
Date: December 11, 2007