16 May 2007
Copies of the Bad Arolsen archive on the Nazi era will be released to Holocaust institutions within a few months, under an agreement reached on 15 May in Amsterdam. The documents will give historians an inside view of the Nazi machinery of oppression and death and will let survivors and victims' families conduct research into their family history. The 11-nation governing body of the International Tracing Service, which runs the archive based in Bad Arolsen, Germany, has voted to side-step legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies to the eleven member states of the archive as soon as they are ready.
The decision circumvents the requirement to withhold the documents until all countries ratify the 2006 treaty that enabled the unsealing of the archive. However, institutions receiving the electronic copies are prohibited from allowing access to researchers until the ratification process is complete, archive director Reto Meister told the AP news agency. Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev welcomed the decision. "I am delighted to see this project moving forward, “ he said.
