Survivors angry at Bad Arolsen restrictions

I recently posted about the Bad Arolsen archives that will be coming to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, albeit with draconian restrictions that will prevent access to the records by thousands of survivors.

JTA has just offered an update, with comments by Miami-based Holocaust Survivors Foundation president David Schaecter, founding chairman Menachem Rosensaft of International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, Holocaust Survivors Foundation attorney Samuel Dubbin, and Second Generation Los Angeles founding president Klara Firestone, who is also a member of the Generations of the Shoah International coordinating council.

Holocaust survivors are venting their anger at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum over its decision not to allow immediate electronic access to the long-secret records of the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.

Many survivors and members of the second generation have complained in the past about the museum's fundraising and other issues, but a dispute over prohibiting immediate remote access to the Bad Arolsen documentation — the way other government documents are accessed — brought many in the Holocaust community to express their anger publicly as never before.

The documents are expected to be transferred to the Holocaust museum here under an international treaty. The archives include millions of images relating to concentration-camp prisoner documents.

"Where does the museum get the chutzpah?" asked David Schaecter, president of the Miami-based Holocaust Survivors Foundation. He singled out Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the point man for the Bad Arolsen transfer.

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