WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), introduced a resolution expressing gratitude to all of the member states of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service (ITS) for ratifying the May 2006 Agreement to amend the 1955 Bonn Accords granting open access to vast Holocaust and other World War II related archives located in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Chairman Hastings was joined by Representatives Robert Wexler (D-FL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and Mark S. Kirk (R-IL), in introducing the resolution.
The opening of the archives is an historical moment that will allow public access to approximately 50 million records on the fates of some 17.5 million individual victims of Nazi brutality. Digital copies of the millions of documents are already being transferred to receiving institutions that include the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel, and will be made available to survivors and scholars beginning in early 2008.
“The opening of the Holocaust archives in Bad Arolsen is quite a momentous occasion. It saddens me to think that it has taken more than 62 years to open the largest remaining Holocaust archive in the world. Clearly, it should never have taken so long.
“This has been a long path, which I have travelled with my friends and colleagues Robert Wexler, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mark Kirk and others, but nonetheless it brings me great joy to know that Holocaust survivors and researchers alike will be able to view these tremendously important documents and hopefully find closure on one of the darkest moments in history,” said Hastings.
