A Paper Monument the History of the Arolsen Archives
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1 1 A Paper Monument The History of the Arolsen Archives Catalogue of the permanent exhibition, edited by Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler and Isabel Panek on behalf of the Arolsen Archives Bad Arolsen 2019 2 2 3 3 Imprint Project management Floriane Azoulay, Dr. Henning Borggräfe Exhibition setup Uwe Sinkemat, Hamburg Project coordination Isabel Panek, Friederike Scharlau Graphical production Atelier Köbbert, Berlin Curators Dr. Henning Borggräfe, Dr. Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek Lighting gewerkdesign, Berlin Research support Dr. Florian Altenhöner, Nathalie Beuchel, Carolin Fahle, Audio production Harald Krewer - speaklow, Berlin Saida Kikhlyarova, Dr. Anke Münster, Erik Steps Reproductions PAL Preservation Academy, Leipzig Texts Dr. Henning Borggräfe, Dr. Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek Exhibit photography Frederic Bozada, Johanna Groß Editor (German) INSEL+MEILE Museumskultur, Christiane Weber Arrangement of exhibits gewerkdesign, Berlin English translation Jessica Spengler Catalogue design gewerkdesign, Berlin Editor (English) Dr. Christian Höschler Catalogue cover design Jan-Eric Stephan Additional translations Nathalie Letierce-Liebig, Charline Munzer, and transcriptions Małgorzata Przybyla, Margit Vogt Layout and typesetting Marcus Neumann Academic Advisory Board Yehudit Shendar, Dr. Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia, Printed by Oeding print, Braunschweig Dr. Jens-Christian Wagner Curatorial Advisor Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau Administration Kai Schluckebier, Stefan Rehrmann Exhibition design, architecture, gewerkdesign, Berlin realisation Head of Design Jens Imig Exhibition architecture Bianca Mohr The exhibition has been funded by Exhibition graphic Birgit Schlegel Media production Alexandra Zackiewicz Infographics Ida Flik, Franziska Müller Production management Sebastian Franke, Julia Junghänel, Franziska Müller In cases where the holder of rights could © 2019 Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution not be identified, the publisher welcomes and copyright holders. All rights reserved. Exhibition construction Crofts UG, Berlin/ Uwe Sinkemat - Ausstellungsaufbau, information that might assist in allowing Hamburg/ Karsten Witte - Metallgestaltung, Hamburg compensation for any copyright claims. ISBN 978-3-948126-01-8 4 4 5 5 Content 6 Preface Floriane Azoulay 8 A Paper Monument: Introduction Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler, Isabel Panek 20 Prologue 34 Early Tracing and Documenting 36 Self-Organization by Survivors 44 Tracing Activities by Experienced Organizations 50 The Central Tracing Bureau (CTB) 58 The Founding of the International Tracing Service (ITS) 62 Why and Where in Arolsen? 72 Central Name Index 78 Tracing and Information 80 The Last Hope: Mass Tracing 1945–1950 86 A Focus on Tracing Children and Adolescents 94 From Tracing Missing Persons to Administrative Act 104 Piles of Letters Unanswered: Waiting for Information 110 Searching for Clues: New Questions from Later Generations 118 Who Were and Are the Employees? 132 Collecting and Organizing 134 Early Investigative Documents 140 The Creation of an Archive for Clarifying Fates 150 Preserve and Destroy: The Acquisition of Documents 158 Digitization and Preservation 166 Who Managed and Manages the Institution? 186 Openness versus Isolation 188 Lists of Imprisonment Sites: Early ITS Research 194 Research in Arolsen in the 1960s and 1970s 202 Protests against the Isolation of the ITS 206 New Paths in Cataloguing and Research 214 Epilogue 216 List of Sources 219 Acknowledgements 6 7 Preface It is a new chapter for the Arolsen Archives. The inter- for whom we have found original documents and the Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia and Jens-Christian national center on Nazi persecution is taking a critical many others for whom we have not – but whose mem- Wagner, who provided essential input at key stages. look at its own past through this exhibition and publi- ory is preserved in the letters we receive from rel- The design and implementation of the exhibition was cation on the history of what came into existence as atives asking about them. This, too, is characteristic handled by gewerkdesign, Berlin – thanks a lot for the the International Tracing Service (ITS). of the Arolsen Archives. They are living collections professional work! that continue to grow. Why was the ITS founded? How and where were the Very special thanks go to the witnesses and victims documents collected? What inquiries have, to this day, When we look to the future, we see changes in society of persecution, Alexandr Afanasjew, Esther Bejarano, been sent to the ITS by over three million people and new challenges to tackle – in a Europe shaped Thomas Buergenthal and Anna Scharf, for their sup- around the world? This publication answers these and by migration and growing intolerance. Reckoning with port. And last but not least, thank you to the many many other questions. our own history is the prerequisite for acting respon- employees of the Arolsen Archives who have shared sibly in the future. For this reason, we want to actively their knowledge of the past. The Arolsen Archives hold more than 30 million doc- approach people and spark their interest, particular- uments on Holocaust victims, concentration camp ly young people with no personal connection to the prisoners, forced laborers and survivors. The sheer history of National Socialism. We do not know what size of the collection is overwhelming, and every sin- questions future generations will ask, but we must gle document bears witness to the incomprehensible ensure that they keep asking. scope of persecution under the Nazis. The last signa- ture of a murdered prisoner on a concentration camp The exhibition will be temporarily displayed in a registration card, the passport photo of a surviving rented space in Bad Arolsen (Germany) until this child in a post-war file – these are intimate and per- collection, belonging to the UNESCO Memory of the sonal traces of individual lives in the huge machin- World, is finally brought together under a new roof. ery of bureaucracy. For me, this is what the Arolsen I hope that the exhibition raises awareness of the Archives are about. They are about death, but also potential of the Arolsen Archives to play a new role, about life. to address socially relevant issues and to strengthen democratic values. The archive of the ITS was created to document the crimes of the Nazis and the fates of their victims. To- I would like to thank the curators of the exhibition, day the archive is a place where evidence of the Nazis’ Isabel Panek, Henning Borggräfe and Christian atrocities is safely preserved. The Arolsen Archives Höschler. I also want to thank those who have sup- are a “paper monument,” to borrow an expression ported this endeavor from the start, especially Rikola- from survivor Thomas Buergenthal. They are a mon- Gunnar Lüttgenau, our curatorial advisor whose help Floriane Azoulay, ument to all victims of Nazi persecution, both those has been invaluable, as well as Yehudit Shendar, Director of the Arolsen Archives 8 9 mans and in fierce battles over legal punishment and foe. Separate tracing structures were established for A Paper Monument: compensations in the first decades after the war, but German war victims, prisoners of war, refugees and also in new social efforts to come to terms with the expellees, while the Allies focused on victims of Nazi past and in waves of compensation since the 1980s. persecution. Although there were historical forerun- ners to these activities – such as the tracing programs The third perspective reveals the profound changes in developed by the International Committee of the Red Introduction how the documents have been handled. Over the de- Cross (ICRC) in Geneva during World War I which pri- cades, documents that had once been used for Nazi marily dealt with prisoners of war – the process start- persecution and then for Allied aid became the every- ed off in fits and starts. In the first postwar years a day working materials of the ITS, which adapted them variety of organizations carried out tracing, informa- Henning Borggräfe, in a variety of ways – by specially sorting and labeling tion and documentation activities in parallel and in Christian Höschler, them, for example. But these documents have also different ways. become increasingly valuable to memory culture. This Isabel Panek can be seen in the growing interest of memorial initia- Some of the earliest efforts were made by survivors tives, scholars and journalists, as well as in the new themselves, many of whom were neither silent nor status that was conferred on this documentary heri- passive after 1945. For example, prisoners liberated tage when the collections were added to the UNESCO from Dachau concentration camp founded the Inter- Millions of people were deported and murdered under The exhibition on the history of the Arolsen Archives Memory of the World register in 2013. The actual pro- national Information Office (IIO). The IIO issued certif- the Nazi dictatorship from 1933 to 1945 in Germany focuses on this paper in order to address three central cess of working with the documents and questions of icates of imprisonment based on concentration camp and the territories it occupied during World War II. The perspectives spanning the systematic and chronolog- access are therefore an important part of the story. documents that the prisoners themselves had saved victims included Jews, Sinti and Roma people, politi- ical narrative. First, the documents represent the al- shortly before liberation.