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Friday May 11, 2007

Survivors oppose transfer of Holocaust archive to D.C.

by edwin black
jta

The International Tracing Service’s secret Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany, is preparing to transfer millions of images of concentration camp prisoner documents to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum under embargo, according to sources in Germany and the United States familiar with the transfer.

A May 14 meeting of the 11-nation committee that oversees the archive is expected to authorize the partial transfer, but only on condition that an embargo be imposed on accessing the materials.

The embargo is needed because three of the 11 nations that must ratify the release of the documents — Greece, Belgium and France — have yet to sign the authorization agreement.

European sources familiar with the process suggested that Belgium and France would not sign the agreement until after this summer or even early next year because of domestic electoral considerations. Still, the process of data transfer is being accelerated to prepare for the eventual release.

The Holocaust museum has agreed to keep the documents secret until authorized by the 11-government committee — meaning that for now, at least, the archive’s legacy of secrecy will transfer as well.

The transfer will include 10 million digitized images of documents to be transported in several 500-gigabyte hard drives that plug into any computer via a simple USB connection. Small, lightweight, portable drives obviate the prospect of managing linear miles of archival documents.

The museum plans to assemble the raw images into a database with a search engine that can be accessed from one or more terminals in the museum’s archive. The gargantuan collection will instantly double the size of the museum’s holdings.

While the museum archive is among the most helpful in the Holocaust community, its small staff, handful of microfilm-reader machines and several computer terminals often cannot keep up with user requests, especially in the summer.

In addition to on-site usage of the archive, some 8,000 requests come to the museum each year via mail, phone and email, and the archive staff tries to fulfill those as soon as possible. The backlog for inquiries at Bad Arolsen in 2006 exceeded 425,000, according to a recent congressional report prepared by the State Department.

As the museum gears up to receive the trove, several members of Congress, the archival community and members of grassroots Holocaust groups are questioning why the museum should be given the documents.

Museum officials said they will not permit archival access via the open Internet or via terminals at libraries and universities around the country, the way other databases of documents are commonly accessed. Museum officials declined to explain their motives for restricting access.

David Marmelstein, co-chairman of Miami Holocaust Survivors of Dade County, has passionately argued for unrestricted access.

“Every day there are people dying, not knowing what happened to their loved ones. With the documents here in Florida, we can ensure that anyone could get a ride to the library so they could ask someone to check their name,” he said.

One congressional source close to the transfer asked, “What am I missing? Why can’t these documents be located near the survivors themselves?”

Edwin Black is the author of “IBM and the Holocaust” and is responsible for a series of investigations revealing the contents of the ITS archives at Bad Arolsen.

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