11-nation commission agrees to start transferring Nazi archive to Holocaust researchers

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century.

The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe's darkest period.

The countries governing the archive maintained by the International Tracing Service approved a plan to begin transferring scanned documents as soon as they are ready so that receiving institutions can begin preparing them for public use, said a delegate, requesting anonymity because a formal announcement was due later Tuesday.

The decision circumvents the requirement to withhold the documents until all 11 countries ratify the 2006 treaty amendments that enabled the unsealing of the documents. Ratification is still pending in four countries, and Tuesday's vote was likely to shave several months from the distribution timetable.

Until now, the files maintained in the central German town of Bad Arolsen have been used to track missing people, reunite families, and later to validate restitution claims. The Tracing Service is an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Three countries, the United States, France and Germany, pledged to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to offset costs for preparing and transmitting the papers, said the delegate.

But some U.S. survivors expressed dismay that the documents will remain restricted to a single place – the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington – and that they won't have unfettered access.

“I'm anxious, because 105 people from my immediate family did not make it. I am the only survivor,” said David Schaecter, of Miami, Fla. “How do I obtain what I am rightfully entitled to obtain – (to know) what happened to these 105 people,” he said.

The archive contains Nazi records on the arrest, transportation, incarceration, forced labor and deaths of millions of people from the year the Nazis built their first concentration camp in 1933 to the end of the war. It also has a vast collection of postwar records from displaced persons camps.

The name index refers to 17.5 million victims, and the documents fill 16 miles of shelves. But the archive is indexed according to names, making it difficult to use them for historical research.

Seized by the Allies from concentration camps and Nazi offices after of the war, the files were closed under a 1955 agreement to protect the privacy of survivors and the reputation of the dead who may have undergone humiliating medical experiments or been falsely accused of crimes.

Last year's amendments to the 1955 accords, reached after years of negotiation and resistance by several members, stipulated that some privacy guarantees remain. A single copy of the documents would be available for each of the 11 member states to be used “on the premises of an appropriate archival repository.”

Each government was expected to take into account “the sensitivity of certain information” the files may contain, the new agreement said.

In addition to the United States, Israel and France indicated they also would seek copies.

The seven countries that have ratified the treaty amendments are the United States, Israel, Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain. Endorsement was awaited from Luxembourg, Greece, Italy and France.

http://www.communist-party.org.uk/downloads/OurHistoryBulletin_6.pdf

CPUSA gives its archives to University An original copy of Joe HillÂ’s pencil-written will, `My Will is easy to decide/ For there is nothing to divideÂ’, written the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, is among the gems in a vast collection of papers and photographs donated by the Communist Party USA to New York University.

The material from the entire period of the PartyÂ’s history includes secret code words for branches and actions, underground names of leaders, personal letters, and directions for how good party members should behave (no charity work, for instance). The donation includes 20,000 books, journals and pamphlets and a million photographs from The Daily WorkerÂ¹s archives. Hardly any of the files were reviewed by the Party before being given away.

The collection is so vast that it will take years to catalogue. Many new dissertations and books are expected to result from the new archives, which are likely to revise the obsessive focus of external historians in the past on the PartyÂ’s supposed subservience to Moscow, neglecting Communists work in organising labour and fighting racism. Much contentious `scholarshipÂ’ is now expected to be massively revised. Much personal insight is likely to come from the huge number of files of detailed complaints of police brutality against African-Americans and Â“pilesÂ” of prison correspondence from activists.

http://dlib.nyu.edu/eadapp/transform?source=tamwag/rcp.xml&style=tamwag/tamwag.xsl&part=body
Guide to the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Collection
1975-1979

Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

Phone: (212) 998-2630
Fax: (212) 995-4225
E-mail: gail.malmgreen@nyu.edu
Â© 1999 Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. All rights reserved.
New York University Libraries, Publisher
Processed by Stacy Kinlock
Machine-readable finding aid derived from a SGM EAD v1 finding aid dated: 1999. Machine-readable finding aid created by Apex Data Services. Description is in English.
2004 Electronic finding aid revised according to local applications by Brian Stevens.

Descriptive Summary
Creator: Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Title: Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Collection
Dates: 1975-1979
Abstract: The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) was a Maoist organization founded in 1975 as the successor to the Revolutionary Union (founded in 1968). The collection consists of central committee bulletins and position papers, as well as pamphlets, flyers, and items from related organizations of the era.
Quantity: 1 linear feet (1 box)
Call Phrase: Tamiment 090

Adding a new link to this post.

NW_AZ just found this:

The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, TW9 4DU, UK
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Right wing extremists and groups

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2008/august/right-wing-extremists.htm

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2008/august/interim.htm

Recent releases at The National Archives

Introduction

German intelligence agents and suspected agents

German intelligence officers

Communists and suspected Communists

Soviet intelligence officers

Lists of Soviet officials in the UK (KV 6/70-73)

Soviet intelligence agents and suspected agents

Right wing extremists and groups

Channels for deception (KV4/429-430)

Italian espionage & Malta (KV 2/2869; KV 3/352-365; KV 4/432-434)

Files of interest to Czech and Slovakian researchers

Listen now: Security Service document release talk podcast (mp3, 12mb)

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