Commission to make historic changes in Nazi archive access rules

Armed with key concessions from Germany, an 11-nation commission convened in Luxembourg today to finalise arrangements to open a vast archive documenting the death, enslavement or oppression of 17 million Jews, Roma and others deemed undesirable to the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

The move to unlock the storehouse of some 50 million files in the German town of Bad Arolsen comes under pressure from the dying generation of Holocaust survivors and victims’ families, who fear their histories will be lost forever unless the rules are changed for accessing the files.

Legal experts worked through the day and late into the night yesterday on amending the language of two documents governing the archives – a 1955 treaty among the 11 countries on the oversight commission, and an agreement between those countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross which administers the archive.

“There are still some problems, but I am confident we will have an agreement by this afternoon,” said Paul Mertz, the Luxembourg Foreign Ministry official chairing the meeting.