World War II

This past Wednesday, November 28 was a big day for historians when an enormous archive of German war records was finally made available to the public. Accessibility to the data also means that some Holocast survivors and their families, who have been waiting 60 years, may finally get some answers about the fate of their loved ones at the hands of the Nazis.

The eleven countries that oversee the International Tracing Service finally reached an agreement allowing for the unsealing of 50 million pages of records, a staggering amount of information. Previously the material had only been available for locating missing persons, reuniting families, and providing documentation in cases of compenstaion claims.

While most experts agree that the records aren’t going to change the big picture of what we know about the Final Solution and Nazi Germany itself, they are likely to add new depth to the story and to answer many personal questions. The archive contains references to 17.5 million individiuals and covers 16 linear miles.

As an historian who has conducted research in archives I can tell you that the sifting process will consume the efforts of generations of my colleagues. While computers and technology have dramatically changed how we collect and store data, there are still connections and conclusions that can only be drawn by the mind of man (or woman) laboring over dusty folders and armed with an already intimate understanding of the topic at hand. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust were not my particular area of expertise, but I can freely admit that when I saw the photo above (a screen capture from the original ABC news story, which you can read here), I was fairly itching to get in there and start reading.

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WWII, World War II, Nazi, archive, Holocaust, International Tracing Service