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MEDIA ADVISORY
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM TO BEGIN RESPONDING TO SURVIVOR REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION FROM INTERNATIONAL TRACING SERVICE ARCHIVE
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January 14, 2008
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| | WHAT: | PRESS BRIEFING: After leading the effort to open the world’s largest closed Holocaust archive, the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will announce that it is ready to begin responding to requests for information made by Holocaust survivors and their families for information from the collection.
Museum representatives and the Director of the ITS will provide an overview of the archive, how it came to be opened, and demonstrate the processes the Museum has developed to find specific documents in this massive collection. A Holocaust survivor who has received information from the archive will also be available to answer questions.
The ITS archive contains more than 100 million digital images of material relating to the fates of approximately 17.5 million people—both Jews and non-Jews—who perished in the Holocaust or otherwise fell victim to the Nazi regime. In August 2007, the Museum received the first installment of digital copies of the ITS collection, comprising 18 million digital images of camp, transport, ghetto, and arrest records. In November, the Museum received a copy of the Central Name Index which consists of more than 50 million digital images. The remainder of the collection, relating to slave labor and displaced persons camps, will be transferred in installments between 2008 and 2010. | | WHO: | - Sara J. Bloomfield, Director, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Reto Meister, Director, International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, Germany
- Paul Shapiro, Director, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Michael Haley Goldman, Director, Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Holocaust survivor who received information from the ITS archive.
| | WHEN: | Thursday, January 17, 2008, 9:30 a.m. | | WHERE: | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg PL SW (15th St.) entrance
Metro: Smithsonian, Orange/Blue lines | | MEDIA: | Media interested in attending the briefing should contact Andy Hollinger at 202-488-6133 or ahollinger@ushmm.org. | |
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