International Tracing WWII Archive
Documents of 50 million Holocaust Survivors
A compilation of Hitler's documents, this paper museum has millions of items related to survivors and victims of the Holocaust and concentration camps.
The Holocaust is an emotional issue for people in every county and especially resonates with seniors - people over 70. There is a place in Bad Arolsen, Germany where almost 20 miles of shelves contain actual documents about human beings caught in that terrible time of war.
A press release came across my desk about a 60 Minutes story about the files, located at the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
The documents belonged to Hitler's regime. The Allies confiscated the materials to sort and preserve the documents, jewelry and personal belongings of victims. It's the largest Holocaust archive in the world, containing information about 17 million victims of the Holocaust. The International Tracing Service has documents leading Annaliese Marie Frank (Anne Frank) from Amsterdam to her death at Bergen Belsen camp.
There are lists of people selected to work in a munitions factory owned by Oskar Schindler. There is a death list of people shot one every 2 minutes for 2 hours as a gift to Hitler on his birthday.
If you are researching family, or general history of the time, or just have a need to never forget, the International Tracing Service site is worth a visit. It's written in German, but has an English translation, though not all the pages come up in English. Watch the 60 Minutes video in its entirety - it runs about 15 minutes and will open a new window on your browser.
For the report, 60 Minutes invited Walter Feiden, Miki Schwartz, and Jack Rosenthal to visit Bad Arolsen. No other Holocaust survivors have, to date, entered the archive.
The Red Cross set up the Tracing Service to help locate families and trace victims by allowing people to write in with requests for information. For 60 years, these documents have been hidden away. Now, the Service spends much of their time assembling, classifying and evaluating records about prisoners, deported Jews, foreigners in Reich territory 1939-1945, displaced persons and children separated form their families.
It is possible to request information from the Service via email or snail mail, as described on their Web site. Inquiries must include "complete personal data (also changes of name, cover names and the like) as well as, if possible, information about the places of stay during the incarceration and, besides this, possible places and times of employment including the name of the employer/firm. As far as can still be remembered, the prisoner’s number should be given in case of incarceration in a concentration camp."
Inquirers must digitally sign, or physically sign the request and include their postal address.
