States complete ratification of accord to open vast Nazi archive - Haaretz

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Last update - 19:59 30/11/2007

States complete ratification of accord to open vast Nazi archive

By The Associated Press

Tags: Holocaust, Nazis, Germany

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.

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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."

Related articles:

Copies of Nazi archive to be released to Holocaust institutions

Systematic mass murder of Jews detailed in huge Nazi archive

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1.	Killed in gas chamber	15:28	\|	Dav	28/11/07

2.	What took them so long	15:31	\|	Humble Jew	28/11/07

3.	Is Israel keeping similar records of civilians killed by IDF?	16:16	\|	Natallie Durson	28/11/07

4.	# 3 --Durson	16:43	\|	zayda	28/11/07

5.	The archives	18:08	\|	Joe	28/11/07

6.	records / concentration camp	18:18	\|	ricardo	28/11/07

7.	good	23:33	\|	rw	28/11/07

8.	RW	05:37	\|	Gary	29/11/07

9.	# (--Gary	17:08	\|	zayda	29/11/07

10.	6 millions ???	19:19	\|	Bonheur	29/11/07

11.	bonheur in montreal	22:20	\|	joe	29/11/07

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