Holocaust Records to Be Opened for First Time

Jan 18, 07:27 AM

Jan. 18--Survivors of concentration camps and the descendants of Holocaust victims now have a new way of finding out information about loved ones who died at the hands of the Nazis.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., yesterday announced it would begin providing information from the International Tracing Service archive to survivors and families previously stymied in their search for answers. Many of them had been frustrated because a German archive remained closed more than 60 years after the end of World War II.

"It's so exciting, because of the possibilities of maybe some people getting some information where they didn't before," said Beth Lilach, director of education at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove.

Many Holocaust survivors, and relatives of death-camp victims, want to know about aunts, uncles and other ancestors who were killed in Nazi Germany, Lilach said. Records at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Jerusalem's Yad Vashem are useful but limited, she said.

But the Washington museum now has 50 million digital images from the tracing service's Central Name Index, part of a vast collection of 100 million images at the archive's headquarters in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The records describe the fates of 17 1/2 million people, including Jews and non-Jews.

The archives were off-limits to researchers for many years, until the service's governing board last year agreed to open the collection to the public.

"This moment is a wonderful victory for survivors, although long overdue," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the Washington museum.

Researchers will search for records at no charge, the museum said. The museum said it is receiving records in installments from Germany; the last installment is due in 2010.

Lilach said she has received queries about the archive in recent months, and she is hoping more people show an interest in using it.

"I don't think people know much about it," she said. "This one is unlike the others in that it has 50 million documents, and it's worth a try."

Requests for information are accepted by e-mail, regular mail or fax. More information can be found on the Washington museum's Web site, www.ushmm.org.

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