Nazi Archive Digitalised
Nazi Archive Digitalised
May 17, 2007: A Nazi archive governed by 11 separate countries will be opened later this year, with digital copies of 50 million pages of Holocaust information to be made available for researchers and the general public.
With this information, researchers will be able to further explore more on the 17.5 million people who were prosecuted by the Nazis. Previously, this information was not made available due to privacy concerns.
However the International Tracing Service currently responsible for the archive is still determining the technical capabilities to copy the documents before they will be made freely available. In the meantime, donations from the US, France and Germany amounting to $700,000 in total, will enable the service to get the ball moving on digitalising the papers.
With information on the transportation, arrest, forced labour and deaths of million of people from 1933 and 1945, the International Tracing Service says the archive also contains a collection of post-war records and information on displaced persons camps.
As a division of the Red Cross, the International Tracking Service have previously used the information to reunite families, track missing persons and validate compensation claims. Now, the documents will be available for other organisations to archive the files with existing information and potentially fill the missing gaps in their war research.
Once seized by Allies after the war, there have been 11 million request to see the archive since 1955. However few people were actually allowed to access the information, and it was extremely rare for copies of the documents to actually be made and sent on to families of victims.
The decision was made at a meeting in Amsterdam, where seven of the eleven countries involved in the archive ratified a treaty to make the information public. While four countries still have to ratify the treaty before the entire contents of the archive can be made freely available, their signatures are expected later this year.
All up, there’s about 50 million pages contained in the archive, about 10 million look set to be released by September, with another chuck available in November.