Friday, March 9, 2007

Remnants.

From the NYT:
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Moving more quickly than expected, the 11-nation body overseeing a long-secret archive of Nazi war records set procedures in
motion Thursday to open millions of files on concentration camps and their victims before the end of the year.
Here is a little something about the archives and their contents:

The files, stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany, have been used since the 1950s to help locate missing persons or uncover the fate of people who disappeared during the Third Reich. Later, the files were also used to validate claims for compensation.

Only personnel of the Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, had access to the files, which fill 16 miles of gray metal filing cabinets and cardboard binders in six nondescript buildings in the central German resort town.

The article also begins to explore some of the implications of this wider access:

While much has been written about the Holocaust, scholars say the Bad Arolsen files will fill in gaps in history and provide a unique perspective gained from seeing original Nazi letters, the minutiae of the concentration camps' structures, slave labor records and uncounted testimonies of victims and ordinary Germans who witnessed the brutality of the Gestapo.

About 12 million people -- half of them Jews -- were systematically exterminated by the Nazis, and tens of millions more were incarcerated, displaced or forced to work for the German war machine. The Bad Arolsen archives index 17.5 million names that appear in its files, making them the world's most complete record of individual suffering during the Holocaust.

In the last 60 years, the Tracing Service has responded to 11 million requests from survivors and their families, but the overwhelming number of inquiries led to delays lasting years and resulted in only the sketchiest of replies. Once the files are available in Washington, Jerusalem and other locations, survivors will be able to search for information under the normal rules of each archive.

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