Nazi Archives: Researching Evil

What if your grandmother, husband, aunt, dear friend, or family hero vanished in the Nazi atrocities? Until the last decade, searching through the tens of millions of documents left recording their fates was a tedious task, requiring hand-sorting through crumbling papers that were nothing like complete. Over time, computers and the Internet has gradually expedited this task. But still, the bulk of Nazi documents were off-limits, requiring interested parties to apply to the Red Cross and wait months or years for inadequate answers. Today, that exercise in futility has been eased.

In November 2007, the world's largest collection of Nazi documents were unsealed in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The archive is stored in several warehouses staffed by 400 members of the International Red Cross, its caretaker. Until now, the documents have primarily been used by the IRC to locate missing persons and document atrocities for the purpose of compensation; today, however, this fascinating dark treasure can be mined for deeper information about who and what the Nazis were, and how their victims suffered and still suffer today.

The archives consist of 16 million separate documents stored in more than 16 miles (if laid out in a straight line) of filing cabinets and binders stored in six separate buildings. Eleven countries controlled access to the documents until today, but at last an agreement has been ratified permitting public access to the papers. The first researchers will probably be survivors and relatives, who have complained that the large staff controlling these papers has not been able to satisfy their requrests for information. Their work will be tedious, however, as less than half the documents contained here have been scanned so that they can be electronically accessed.

Important historical documents contained here include the deportation list to Auschwitz on which Anne Frank and her family appear, and a list of Jews who were protected from deportation by Oskar Schimmler when he retained them as employees.

This is the largest archive, but not the only archive, of documents relating to Nazism. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), opened in 2001, supports the International Tracing Service (ITS) inventory, an online service that enables seekers to look for documents in 21,000 different historical collection; while these documents are generally not available online, researchers can determine which collection is most likely to contain the documents they need by using this inventory. You can also find the Registry of Holocaust Survivors at the USHMM.

Also, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial located in Jerusalem, brought its main database online in 2004. The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names is a convenient place to look up personal, historical, and genealogical documents relating to the Holocaust, and is especially valuable because its primary mission has been to capture every victim's name. To this end, the database was designed so that the public could add its own names and documents to their online collection recording over 3 million names.

In other cases, independent organizations such as the Czestochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group in Poland or the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio, are gathering information directly from the last-known survivors of the Holocaust, compiling their lists of names and memories to preserve for future generations. It is groups like these that will bequeath us the last sad traces of a history we must not forget.