28 July 2006
Researchers will gain access to the world's biggest archive of Nazi documents under an agreement signed by Germany and seven other nations in Berlin. Administered by the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the archives in the German town of Bad Arolsen encompass 50 million documents, among them Schindler's List. The files contain personal data on some 17.5 million victims of the Nazis, including concentration camp inmates, slave laborers and people who were forced to flee their homeland. The signing follows a deal reached in May by the 11-nation governing body of the tracing service grouping Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States. Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands did not attend Wednesday's signing ceremony but will have to endorse the protocol before the archives can be fully opened as planned on November 1. Historians have had access since 1996 to archive data on conditions in the concentration camps and slave labor but the files on individual detainees have been off-limits. Together with the US administration and Holocaust researchers around the world, the World Jewish Congress campaigned for giving access to victims' data contained in the archives.
