Public access to Nazi records hits snags

One more archive from history's worst genocide is missing.

In the German town of Bad Arolsen, technicians are scanning the largest closed collection of Nazi documents, sheet by sheet. The archive is managed by the International Tracing Service, created by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the chaotic aftermath of World War II to track down missing persons and help reunite families.

The Tracing Service's files constitute the most complete record on Nazi victims. Its estimated 50 million pages of concentration camp papers, death lists, transport documents and postwar displaced-persons folders contain the names of 17.5 million murdered or persecuted people -- about one-fourth of them Jews.

After years of pressure from victims groups and from the United States, the 11 nations that govern the Tracing Service decided in May 2006 to make them accessible for the first time to researchers and to survivors. Each country's national archive would be offered electronic copies.

That decision cheered aging survivors, who believed they finally might find clues to the fate of friends, old neighbors, and entire villages that vanished in the Nazi inferno. But their mood turned angry when they learned that the decision required ratification by all 11 countries -- a process expected to be completed only later this year. Even then, they still won't be able to browse the files freely. Instead, staff will search for material they request.

"Such an arrangement falls far short of genuine open access," said the Holocaust Survivors' Foundation, based in Miami. Survivors want to see the records "with our own eyes and on our own terms."

The archivists in Jerusalem and Washington defend their colleagues in Germany, citing an array of legal and technical problems.

Sara Bloomfield, director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which will receive a copy of the Tracing Service's archive, said critics "grossly oversimplify accessibility." At Yad Vashem, which will receive Israel's copy, information technology chief Michael Lieber says the documents are simply too disorganized.

"Even if the member states resolved to put it on the Internet, there wouldn't be much point," he said. "There is no tool available for people to handle it themselves."

One problem for Bad Arolsen is legal. The 2006 agreement says receiving countries must "ensure adequate protection relating to personal data" and block access to sensitive information about the victims.

Then there's the Tracing Service's system. Unlike a library's alphabetized card index, the Tracing Service's Central Name Index of 40 million cards has many duplicated names with variations, usually filed according to the German phonetic spelling.

All but 3 million are written by hand, many in German script, and aren't machine-readable.