Holocaust-era Archives Made Available

Established at the end of World War II at Bad Arolsen, Germany, the ITS has drawn on its archive of 50 million documents concerning 17.5 million people to assist family reunification efforts and to support claims by survivors and heirs for pensions and other forms of compensation.

On May 16, 2006, the International Commission approved two amendments to the 1955 Bonn Agreements to enable the ITS to make its holdings more readily available to the public. Each of the member states of the International Commission will be eligible to receive an electronic copy of the entire archive. The ITS plans to complete digitization of its holdings in 2011.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. will administer the U.S. copy of the archive. Once the documents are formatted to the museum’s computer system, the Museum will facilitate access to the documents for survivors and their families. The copy of the archives will also be a valuable source of information for researchers. The formatting process is now underway and is expected to take several months.

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