Vast Nazi archive opens to public

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- After more than 60 years, Nazi documents stored in a vast warehouse in Germany were unsealed Wednesday, opening a rich resource for Holocaust historians and for survivors to delve into their own tormented past.

The treasure of documents could open new avenues of study into the inner workings of Nazi persecution from the exploitation of slave labor to the conduct of medical experiments. The archive's managers planned a conference of scholars next year to map out its unexplored contents.

The files entrusted to the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, have been used to find the fate of missing persons or document atrocities to support compensation claims. The U.S. government also has referred to the ITS for background checks on immigrants it suspected of lying about their past.

Inquiries were handled by the archive's 400 staff members in the German spa town of Bad Arolsen. Few outsiders were allowed to see the actual documents, which number more than 50 million pages and cover 16 linear miles of gray metal filing cabinets and cardboard binders spread over six buildings.

On Wednesday, the Red Cross and the German government announced that the last of the 11 countries that govern the archive had ratified a 2006 agreement to open the files to the public.

'A breakthrough'

Survivors have pressed for decades to open the archive, unhappy with the minimal responses from the Red Cross officials responding to requests for information about relatives.

"We are very anxious," said David Mermelstein, 78, an activist for survivors' causes in Miami, who wants to scour the files for traces of his two brothers whom he last saw as he passed through a series of concentration camps.

"Now I hope we will be able to get some information. We have been waiting, and time is not on our side," said the retired businessman.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem began receiving digital copies of the entire archive in August, allowing survivors and historians more access points.

Yad Vashem said the opening of the archive was "a breakthrough" for survivors and others.

"Our understanding and knowledge of the personal story of the Holocaust will be deepened," said Yad Vashem's chairman Avner Shalev.

The records are unlikely to change the general story of the Holocaust and the Nazi era, probably the most intensely researched 12-year period of the 20th century.

But its depth of detail and original documentation will add texture to history's worst genocide, and is likely to fuel a revival of academic interest in the Holocaust.