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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 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licens-es/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932561 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 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 www.degruyter.com Preface Tracing and documenting the victims of National Socialist persecution is atopic that has receivedlittle attention from historicalresearch so far.Inorder to take stock of existing knowledge and provide impetus for historicalresearch on this issue, the Arolsen Archives (formerlyknown as the International Tracing Service) organized an international conferenceonTracing and Documenting Victimsof Nazi Persecution: Historyofthe International Tracing Service (ITS) in Context. Held on October 8and 92018 in BadArolsen,Germany, this event also marked the seventieth anniversary of search bureaus from various European statesmeet- ing with the recentlyestablished International Tracing Service (ITS) in Arolsen, Germany, in the autumn of 1948. More than 120participantsfrom around the world, includingrepresentatives from leading organisations and researchers from various disciplines, looked back over more thanseven decades of tracing missing persons and documenting Nazi persecution. The consequences of Nazi persecution wereand are manifold and they are still felt today. The loss of relatives, the search for anew home, physical or mental injuries,existential problems,social support and recognition, but also continued exclusion and discrimination have shaped the experiences and memories of thosewho were once persecuted, not to mention the effects on their relativesand on society as awhole. Tracing bureaus, archivesand other agencies have playedanimportant role in this field,and this is the subject of the articles that are collected in this volume. Thepublication of thesearticles also reflects the transformationprocess undergonebywhat wasthenthe ITS over thepast decade.After years of international pressure, the former ITS,now the ArolsenArchives,was opened to the public in late 2007.This eventtriggeredanongoingradicaltransformation process,which hasseenthe institution make itsdocuments accessible: to sur- vivorsand their relatives, to educatorsand researchers, as well as to thegen- eral public. The ArolsenArchives have adopted thegoalofmakingtheir UNESCO-protectedholdingseasilyaccessibletoabroadaudience, of support- ingresearchand education, andofincreasing publicawarenessofthe history of thevictims of National Socialism. OpenAccess. ©2020, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. 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 about National Socialist persecution with regard to its victims, its consequences and the cultureofremembrance. As soon therewill be no witnesses and survivors of Nazi persecution left to tell us 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. Iwould like to thankthe authors of this volume very sincerelyfor their con- tributions and expressmydeepgratitudetothe editors,Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler,and Isabel Panek, for the tremendous work they have done. Floriane Azoulay, Director of the Arolsen Archives TableofContents 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 forHistory 13 From Early Tracing Activities to Information forDescendants Christian Höschler,Isabel Panek The (Early) Search forMissing Nazi Victims HistoricalPrecedents, Organizational Frameworks,and Methods 37 Linda G. Levi Family Searching and Tracing Services of JDC in the Second World WarEra 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 BetweenHumanitarian Principles and Socialist Ideology 117 René Bienert SurvivorsHelping Survivors Simon Wiesenthaland the Early Search for Nazi Criminals in Linz 131 Silkevon der Emde Caring forthe Dead and the Living DPs and the Arolsen Archives of Feelings 155 ZviBernhardt YadVashem and Holocaust Victim’sSearch forFamily 173 VIII TableofContents Diane Afoumado ITS Research at the United States HolocaustMemorial Museum for DescendantsofHolocaust Victimsand Survivors 183 Ramona Bräu, Kerstin Hofmann and Anna Meier-Osiński The New Tasksand Challenges for Tracing 201 Collections and Activities of Archives Dealing with NaziVictims Henning Borggräfe, Isabel Panek Collections Archives Dealing with Nazi Victims The Example of the Arolsen Archives 221 Rebecca Boehling From Tracing and FateClarification to Research Center The Role of International Playersand 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 Ludwigsburgand Cooperation with the ITS 261 Tobias Herrmann The Federal Archives and its Role in German Politics of Remembrance 279 CarolaLau 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 NaziVictimsPast and Present – Introduction On March 11, 1948, alettersent from ahospital in Aylesbury,England, reached the recentlyestablished 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 1945hewas deported from the Herne prison near Dortmund to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Since then Ihavehad no wordfrom him.”¹ This wasjust one of thousands of similar letters thatarrived month after month in Arolsen and manyother tracing offices, even three years after the end of the war.Maria Puszkariowahad sent an identical letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which forwarded it to Arol- sen, whereitwas registered two weeks later.Hundreds of thousands of people werestill looking for friends and relativeswho had been deported by the Ger- mans to extermination camps, imprisonedinconcentration camps and other de- tention facilities, or sent to the Reich for forced labor.But nearlythree years after the liberation, how could the ITS find information about the fate of Marian Ćwierz in order to answer this letter?How wereall of the missing persons sup- posed to be found – considering that millions of people had been murdered and could not come forward themselves, and that the confrontation between East and West had divided Germanyand Europe, meaningitwas often impossible to search for clues at the sites of persecution? Personaldocuments were an important component in the effort to answer these questions – documents the Germanshad produced for the purposes of persecution, but also documents the Allies had used to registerand care for liberated prisoners. From the late 1940s onward, more than30million such documents weregathered in Arolsen.This resultedinthe creation of one of the world’slargest collections of documents on the victims of Nazi persecution, which is now being preserved, described and made publiclyaccessible by the The letter from Maria Puskariowa was addressed to the Central Tracing Bureau,the predeces- sor to the ITS,and bears the incomingmail stamp of the CTB, 11.3.1948, 6.3.3.2/90584689/ITS Digital Archive,ArolsenArchives. OpenAccess. ©2020Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler,Isabel Panek, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110665376-002 2 Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler,Isabel Panek Arolsen Archives.² The holdingsinclude extensive documents from the Buchen- wald concentration camp, which were secured by the US Armywhen the camp was liberated and werelater made available for tracing purposes. According

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