3.5 million Holocaust DP names released

The AP reported yesterday that the names of some 3.5 million people displaced after World War II have been provided to Holocaust memorial groups and museums in the United States, Israel and Poland.

The International Tracing Service of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday that it had handed over a third round of digitally copied documents to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Warsaw-based National Institute of Remembrance.

The archive, based in Bad Arolsen, Germany, said the transfer involved copies of index cards that feature the names of people who were freed from Nazi concentration and labor camps as well as prisoners of war.

The move came after a meeting March 18-19 of representatives of national organizations from the member nations of the International Commission, which oversees ITS.

The archive holds millions of index cards, documents and files, some with detailed family histories. The first distribution was provided late last year and it will take the ITS two more years to finish copying onto hard drives the 16 linear miles of documents filling some six buildings. Some 67 million images of documents have already been transferred to the memorials and museums.

The document images allow survivors and victims' relatives to see transportation lists, Gestapo orders, camp registers, slave labor booklets and death books.

Read the complete story here.

Resources for more information:

International Tracing Service
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Yad Vashem
Institute of National Remembrance