Posted on 03/11/2007 7:34:54 AM PDT by SJackson
(IsraelNN.com) Millions of secret files on concentration camps and their victims are likely to be opened by the end of the year.
Representatives of the eleven nations that comprise the governing commission of the International Tracing Service voted on Thursday to begin the process to publicize the papers, AP reports. The Service controls between 30 and 50 million pages of Holocaust documentation.
The body approved a set of recommendations for copying and transferring files to Holocaust institutions for use by survivors, victims' relatives and scholars. Two obstacles still remain, however: A more formal vote to be taken two months from now, and a unanimous ratification of a previous agreement to end the 60-year ban on using the files for research.
Among the 11 nations, Israel, the United States, Poland and the Netherlands have completed ratification, while Germany, Britain and Luxembourg are expected to do so within the next two months. France, Belgium, Italy and Greece are still not on board.
The files, stored in Bad Arolsen, Germany, have been used since the 1950s to help locate missing persons or uncover the fate of people who disappeared during the Third Reich. Later, the files were also used to validate claims for compensation. Only personnel of the Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has had access to the files, which fill 16 miles of gray metal filing cabinets and cardboard binders in six buildings.
Though ratification is still incomplete, the process of opening the files "is irreversible," Reto Meister, director of the Tracing Service, told AP. Notably, the 11 delegations agreed that the Tracing Service should begin electronically transferring scanned files even now.
Institutions on the receiving end, such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, will need several months to integrate the data and get them ready for public use.
Despite the tremendous amount of literature written about the Holocaust, scholars say there are still gaps to be filled in by the Bad Arolsen files. The papers include original Nazi letters, details of the concentration camps' structures, slave labor records and uncounted testimonies of victims and ordinary Germans who witnessed the brutality of the Gestapo.
The Bad Arolsen archives index 17.5 million names that appear in its files, making them the world's most complete record of individual suffering during the Holocaust.
Meister said the collection of documents on concentration camp incarcerations - some 13 million pages of death registers, transportation lists and camp registries - will be ready in June. The rest of the documents will be scanned and transferred within a year.
AP reports that Germany, which funds the Tracing Service, agreed to increase its allocation beginning next year to help offset the $3.2 million needed to speed up the digitization and transfer of files, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum also will provide an unspecified amount.
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What will the holocaust deniers say, that they are all forgeries?
bttt!
Anyone get the feeling that it was used only for tracing missing people in order to cover up certain people's involvement?
AND Rudi Gernreich, George Soros, and others. (do I dare say Kissinger?)
>>>>Anyone get the feeling that it was used only for tracing missing people in order to cover up certain people's involvement?
MAJOR bump!
"..an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.."
Since when can these people be trusted?
The fox guarding the hen house.
LA LA LA LA LA I can't hear you!
It's all a giant Zionist/rightwing Christian/Neo-Con/Theo-Con/Crusader plot.
And of course they're right
/sarcasm
Another reason to hate Soros
History needs to be known because it repeats it's self. People may not want to see what HISTORY is though they wouldn't like living it again. President Thomas Jefferson had the United States Navy take the United States Marines to the "Shores of Tropoli" in 1801 and this is an example because we are in the same area today fighting the same enemy, Muslims. God Bless All who have worn America's uniforms since 10 November 1775.
Someone will have to invent a whole new computer process to sort through this information -- finding accidental and intentional errors in the present classification scheme, indexing, cross referencing, and validation. Otherwise, where do you begin to look?
Think 'The HildaBeast's Missing Thesis' is in there, too? ;)
btt
sixteen miles of green metal file cabinets...
that is sort of hard to comprehend.
I'll have to check and see if pat buchanan writes any angry articles regarding this. He once tried to discredit the fact that the Nazi's used engine exhaust to kill Jews early in the exterminations.
Bayesian auto-class, fuzzy search, etc. Not really a hard computer problem, just very tedious.
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