The International Tracing Service (ITS) clarifies the fates of millions of individuals. The archive, located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, contains over 50 million cards pertaining to 17.5 million civilians persecuted by the Nazis. The ITS collects its information from death books, transportation lists, and medical reports (among others) from over 50 concentration camps and prisons.
The 1955 Bonn Agreements set up a committee of 11 nations that manages the ITS through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These nations are France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, United States.
Recently, these member states and the ICRC have decided to open the ITS's research to the public. Before this decision, you would have to write to the ITS and request information on a specific individual. Now, the archives will be available at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (I'm uncertain where the other nations will house their copies of the archive.). More importantly, the archive is now open for historical analysis.
What impact does the ICRC's decision have? Genocide is the systemic destruction of a race, culture, or nation. Through historical analysis, is it possible to salvage that culture?
The ITS has only focused on the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Should it create archives for other genocides? How pragmatic is it to create an archive for an ongoing genocide such as the one in Darfur?
Links:
The International Tracing Service
The History of the International Tracing Service
United States: International Tracing Service hands over copy of holocaust documents to Holocaust Memorial Museum
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