Last update - 00:00 28/11/2007
States complete ratification of accord to open vast Nazi archive
By The Associated Press
The 11 countries that oversee a vast archive of Nazi documents and concentration camp records have completed the ratification of an accord to open its doors to the public, ending more than 60 years of secrecy, the Red Cross said Wednesday.
Greece was the last of the 11 to formally file its ratification papers with the German Foreign Ministry of the accord initialed in May 2006, clearing the most important hurdle for Holocaust survivors and researchers to access some 50 million pages of wartime documents.
The archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is administered by the International Tracing Service of the International Committee of the Red Cross and has been used exclusively to trace missing persons, reunite families and provide documentation to victims of Nazi persecution to support compensation claims.
The documents will give historians an intimate inside view of the Nazi
machinery of oppression and death, and will let survivors and victims' families search for their own histories, as recorded by their tormentors.
"The ratification process is complete," Reto Meister, director of the Tracing Service, said by telephone from the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial.
Meister said a long list of academics and research organizations already have applied to begin work in the archive, which includes untapped documents of communications among Nazi officials, camp registrations, transportation lists, slave labor files and death lists that detail the mechanics of the Nazi torment.
"I am pleased that the archive of the International Tracing Service can now be opened for research," said Guenter Gloser, Germany's deputy foreign minister responsible for Europe. "I would like to invite all researchers to make use of this, and work through this dark chapter of German history."
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