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May 2, 2019
OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
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Researching Your Family
history,
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Around the
HALB Hits a History Homerun at Cooperstown
41 Football and Fun for Frum Kids
One Document at a
By Malky Lowinger
A
s the number of Holocaust survivors among us diminishes, the level of interest in their stories is at an all time high. Family members are haunted by questions. What really happened to Zeidy’s three brothers who never returned? How did Bubby manage to travel to Switzerland? Did any members of Tanteh Blima’s family survive the horrors of Bergen-Belsen? So many questions, so few answers. Meanwhile, in a remote town in central Germany called Bad Arolsen, there stands a series of nondescript buildings. These buildings house millions of documents, probably the largest archive of the Nazi and postwar era. Many of these documents are the key to answering these heart wrenching questions. Millions of Holocaust victims unfortunately disappeared without a trace. But there were millions of others whose fates were meticulously documented by the Germans and the authorities at the time. The Bad Arolsen archive contains over fifty
We Come to You
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million pieces of documentation with detailed information about 17.5 million civilians who were either victims or survivors of the War. It also includes vital postwar documentation. For many decades these archives were closed to the public. But in 2007, in response to increased worldwide pressure, the collection
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archives were the subject of lots of media attention when they were first opened. But that has since quieted down.” Since then, the entire collection has been painstakingly digitized, a process that is still ongoing ten years later. “We have about 200 million digitized pages so far,” says Dr. Afoumado. The goal, she says, is to make
THE JOURNEY OF
vivors, both Jewish and non-Jewish. “We give priority to living survivors,” she points out, “especially those who are seeking compensation and need documentation to support their claims.” What type of documents are found in these archives? “Every aspect of a prisoner’s life was documented by the Nazis,” says Dr. Afoumado. “There are documents about internment and concentration camps, and about the ghettos and forced labor camps. These include prisoner files, medical files, and transfer lists. If a prisoner was sent from one barrack to another, it was probably documented.” Also fascinating, says Dr. Afoumado, are the documents about postwar Europe and the displaced persons camps. “For most people,” she points out, “the War did not end in 1945. It could have lasted for years afterwards, as survivors struggled to find each other or waited to emigrate. The collection gives us a picture of the world after the War, with documentation about individuals who requested to be transferred, repatriated, or emigrated. “ Researching the archives is not a
JUDGE SAMUEL COLMAN
“Often these are the last pictures ever seen of that person.”
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time
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was opened and made available to both historians and to families seeking information about their loved ones. Dr. Diane Afoumado, Chief of Research and Reference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., has dedicated her career to providing this information to survivors and their families. “Ten years ago,” she says, “the
these pages accessible to the public. She encourages families to contact the ITS (International Tracing Service) office at the museum online to request any documentation or information about their family members. “It’s free of charge,” she notes. Thousands have taken advantage of ITS’s services already. On average, they receive 200 requests a month, mostly from families of sur-
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