Tracing And Documenting Nazi Victims Past And Present

351 Pages·2020·14.067 MB·English

by  Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler and Isabel Panek

Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present
Arolsen Research Series
Edited by the Arolsen Archives –
International Center on Nazi Persecution
Volume 1
Tracing and
Documenting Nazi
Victims Past and
Present
Edited by
Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler
and Isabel Panek
On behalf of the Arolsen Archives.
The Arolsen Archives are funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner
for Culture and the Media (BKM).
ISBN 978-3-11-066160-6
eBook (PDF) ISBN 978-3-11-066537-6
eBook (EPUB) ISBN 978-3-11-066165-1
ISSN 2699-7312
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932561
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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2020 by the Arolsen Archives, Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler,
and Isabel Panek, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Jan-Eric Stephan
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
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Preface
TracinganddocumentingthevictimsofNationalSocialistpersecutionisatopic
that has received little attention from historical research so far. In order totake
stockof existingknowledge and provide impetus for historical research on this
issue,theArolsenArchives(formerlyknownastheInternationalTracingService)
organized an international conference on Tracing and Documenting Victims of
Nazi Persecution: History of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Context.
Heldon October8 and 92018 in Bad Arolsen,Germany,this event also marked
theseventiethanniversaryofsearchbureausfromvariousEuropeanstatesmeet-
ing with the recently established International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen,
Germany, in the autumn of 1948.
Morethan120participantsfromaroundtheworld,includingrepresentatives
from leading organisations and researchers from various disciplines, looked
backovermorethansevendecadesoftracingmissingpersonsanddocumenting
Nazi persecution.The consequences of Nazi persecutionwereand aremanifold
and they are still felt today. The loss of relatives, the search for a new home,
physicalormentalinjuries,existentialproblems,socialsupportandrecognition,
but also continued exclusion and discrimination have shaped the experiences
and memories of those who were once persecuted, not to mention the effects
on their relatives and on society as a whole. Tracing bureaus, archives and
otheragencieshaveplayedanimportantroleinthisfield,andthisisthesubject
of the articles that are collected in this volume.
The publication of these articles also reflects the transformation process
undergonebywhatwasthentheITSoverthepastdecade.Afteryearsofinter-
nationalpressure,theformerITS,nowtheArolsenArchives,wasopenedtothe
public in late 2007. This event triggered an ongoing radical transformation
process,which hasseen the institution make itsdocumentsaccessible:to sur-
vivors and their relatives, to educators and researchers, as well as to the gen-
eral public. The Arolsen Archives have adopted the goal of making their
UNESCO-protected holdings easilyaccessible to a broad audience,of support-
ing research and education, and of increasing public awareness of the history
of the victims of National Socialism.
OpenAccess.©2020,publishedbyDeGruyter. ThisworkislicensedundertheCreative
CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives4.0License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110665376-001
VI Preface
It is my hope that this publication will inspire researchers, educators, and
engaged citizens from all walks of life to explore the vast collections of the
Arolsen Archives and that it will reveal their potential to augment knowledge
aboutNationalSocialistpersecutionwithregardtoitsvictims,itsconsequences
and the culture of remembrance. As soon there will be no witnesses and survi-
vors of Nazi persecution left to tellus about their experiences, it is essential to
make the documents speak in their stead, so that, paraphrasing Elie Wiesel,
the documents become witnesses as well.
Iwouldliketothanktheauthorsofthisvolumeverysincerelyfortheircon-
tributions and express my deep gratitude to the editors, Henning Borggräfe,
Christian Höschler,andIsabelPanek,forthetremendousworktheyhavedone.
Floriane Azoulay,
Director of the Arolsen Archives
Table of Contents
Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek
Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present – Introduction 1
Dan Stone
On the Uses and Disadvantages of the Arolsen Archives for History 13
From Early Tracing Activities to Information for Descendants
Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek
The (Early) Search for Missing Nazi Victims
Historical Precedents, Organizational Frameworks, and Methods 37
Linda G. Levi
Family Searching and Tracing Services of JDC in the Second
World War Era 59
Christine Schmidt
Those Left Behind
Early Search Efforts in Wartime and Post-War Britain 95
Maren Hachmeister
Tracing Services in Poland and Czechoslovakia after 1945
Between Humanitarian Principles and Socialist Ideology 117
René Bienert
Survivors Helping Survivors
Simon Wiesenthal and the Early Search for Nazi Criminals in Linz 131
Silke von der Emde
Caring for the Dead and the Living
DPsand the Arolsen Archives of Feelings 155
Zvi Bernhardt
Yad Vashem and Holocaust Victim’s Search for Family 173
VIII TableofContents
Diane Afoumado
ITS Research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for
Descendants of Holocaust Victims and Survivors 183
Ramona Bräu, Kerstin Hofmann and Anna Meier-Osiński
The New Tasks and Challenges for Tracing 201
Collections and Activities of Archives Dealing with
Nazi Victims
Henning Borggräfe, Isabel Panek
Collections Archives Dealing with Nazi Victims
The Example of the Arolsen Archives 221
Rebecca Boehling
From Tracing and Fate Clarification to Research Center
The Role of International Players and Transnationalism in Shaping the
Identity of the ITS 245
Kerstin Hofmann
“It is our job to find out who did what.”
The Central Office in Ludwigsburg and Cooperation with the ITS 261
Tobias Herrmann
The Federal Archives and its Role in German Politics of Remembrance 279
Carola Lau
Institutes of National Remembrance and their Role in Dealing with National
Socialism
An Examination of the Issues, Debates and Public Perceptions 291
Puck Huitsing and Edwin Klijn
Linking and Enriching Archival Collections in the Digital Age
The Dutch War Collections Network 315
Contributors 339
Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek
Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past
and Present – Introduction
On March 11,1948, a letter sent froma hospital in Aylesbury, England, reached
the recently established International Tracing Service (ITS) in the small town of
Arolsen in Northern Hesse. It had been sent by Maria Puszkariowa, who was
looking for her husband, Marian Ćwierz, whom she had lost contact with in
the last months of the war: “Until 1944 he was in Schevenhütte, Schill Str. 17,
near Aachen. […]. In January 1945 he was deported from the Herne prison
near Dortmund to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Since then I have had
nowordfromhim.”¹Thiswasjustoneofthousandsofsimilarlettersthatarrived
month after month in Arolsen and many other tracingoffices,even three years
after the end of the war. Maria Puszkariowa had sent an identical letter to the
InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross in Geneva,whichforwarded ittoArol-
sen,where it was registered two weeks later. Hundreds of thousands of people
were still looking for friends and relatives who had been deported by the Ger-
manstoexterminationcamps,imprisonedinconcentrationcampsandotherde-
tentionfacilities,orsenttotheReichforforcedlabor.Butnearlythreeyearsafter
the liberation, how could the ITS find information about the fate of Marian
Ćwierz in order to answer this letter? How were all of the missing persons sup-
posedtobefound–consideringthatmillionsofpeoplehadbeenmurderedand
could not come forward themselves, and that the confrontation between East
and West had divided Germany and Europe, meaning it was often impossible
to search for clues at the sites of persecution?
Personal documents were an important component in the effort to answer
thesequestions–documentstheGermanshadproducedforthepurposesofper-
secution, but also documents the Allies had used to register and care for liber-
ated prisoners. From the late 1940s onward, more than 30 million such docu-
ments were gathered in Arolsen. This resulted in the creation of one of the
world’s largest collections of documents on the victims of Nazi persecution,
which is now being preserved, described and made publicly accessible by the
 TheletterfromMariaPuskariowawasaddressedtotheCentralTracingBureau,thepredeces-
sortotheITS,andbearstheincomingmailstampoftheCTB,11.3.1948,6.3.3.2/90584689/ITS
DigitalArchive,ArolsenArchives.
OpenAccess.©2020HenningBorggräfe,ChristianHöschler,IsabelPanek,publishedbyDeGruyter.
ThisworkislicensedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
4.0License.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110665376-002