Germany favors opening WWII archives detailing Nazi atrocities

WASHINGTON — Germany will drop its long opposition to opening a vast World War II-era archive to public inspection, Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries announced Tuesday in Washington.

Her government had argued that the collection, used for decades by the Red Cross to trace victims of the Nazis, should remain under tight control to protect the privacy of millions of people named in the papers.

Zypries disclosed the shift after meeting with Sara Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is part of a campaign to allow broad dissemination of the documents.

The archive, which includes records from concentration camps and German companies that used slave labor, is among the world's greatest collections of information on how the Holocaust unfolded.

Representatives of the 11 countries that oversee the 50 million-record archive are due to hold an annual meeting in Luxembourg on May 17.

Zypries said she hoped the gathering would reach a full consensus for opening the collection, known formally as the International Tracing Service. It is in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Workers at the archive have already scanned many of the documents into digital form. Zypries said this work should continue so that when the 11 countries have completed the necessary legalities, the documents could be made available electronically right away.

The International Tracing Service provides a unique window into the Nazis' obsession with documenting all facets of their rule, including lice inspection reports from concentration camps and records of insurance policies that German firms were required to maintain when they used conscripted workers.

The bulk of the collection is German papers seized by Allied forces; it also includes meticulous Allied records on efforts to settle refugees after the war.

The archive is managed by the Red Cross and financed by the German government. It continues to receive about 150,000 requests a year from people seeking information about missing relatives or confirmation of what happened to them under Nazi rule.

In part because of funding cuts from the German government, a severe backlog has developed; administrators said an inquiry into an average case can take up to four years.

The service is technically owned by 11 countries: the United States, Britain, Belgium, Israel, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Luxembourg.

Eight years ago, the governments agreed in principle to open the archives to historical researchers, but they have missed a succession of self-imposed deadlines to do so.

Officials from the countries meet for only a day each year to review ITS operations. They also require a unanimous vote to take action on most issues.

Germany and Italy have resisted proposals for opening the archives, including a plan to share digital copies of the records with each of the 11 nations.

German diplomats said they worry their government could be sued if the privacy rights of individuals named in the documents were not protected.

Germany does not need to worry that documents in the archive would trigger a new round of compensation lawsuits, experts say, because deadlines in most class-action settlements have passed.