Germany to open up Holocaust archives

Germany agreed today to help clear the way for the opening of Nazi records on some 17 million Jews and slave labourers who were persecuted during the Holocaust.

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that her country would work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives, held in the German town of Bad Arolsen, and allow historians and survivors access to 30 million to 50 million documents.

Until now, Germany resisted providing access to the archives, citing privacy considerations.

Ms Zypries said: “We always put it forward that way in meetings.”

Opening the archives would enable survivors and families of the Nazis’ victims to learn more definitely what happened to their relatives.

Sara Bloomfield, director of the museum, said: “We are losing the survivors, and anti-Semitism is on the rise, so this move could not be more timely.”

She said the move was “something of moral and historical importance in a critical time.

Paul Shapiro, director of the museum’s centre for advanced Holocaust studies, said: “Overall, it makes it possible to learn a lot more about the fate of individuals and to learn a lot more about the Holocaust itself: concentration camps, deportations, slave enforced labour and displaced persons.”

Today’s announcement is the culmination of a 20-year effort by the museum to get the archives opened. Negotiations intensified in the last few years and took on even greater momentum in the last two years.

In a meeting today with Ms Bloomfield, Ms Zypries said Germany had changed its position and would seek immediate revision of an 11-nation accord governing the archives.

She said that should take no more than six months.

Speaking in German, the minister said, “We now agree to open the data in Bad Arolsen in Germany. We now assume the data will be safeguarded by those countries that copy the material and use it, and now that we have made this decision we want to move forward.”

Germany’s privacy law is among the most restrictive among the 11 countries, Mr Shapiro said.

Remaining safeguards, he said, might limit duplicating a document or prevent using the name of someone cited without the person’s permission.

Publication through the internet may also be tightly restrained.

Privacy laws of the other countries will now prevail, he said. Most are less restrictive than Germany’s.

Ms Bloomfield called the decision “a great step, a really important step”.

She said: “I will be completely thrilled when I get the material in the archives.”

For 60 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross has used the archived documents to trace missing and dead Jews and forced labourers, who were systematically persecuted by Nazi Germany and its anti-Semitic allies across central and eastern Europe before and during the Second World War.

The archives have remained off-limits to historians and the public.