In its mission statement, the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen declares its commitment to keep the memory of the millions of victims of Nazi persecution alive. The archive’s collections about persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust are unique in scope and significance.

The ITS preserves these historical records, answers the »requests of survivors and family menbers of victims and makes use of the collections for »research and »education. The ITS archives store about 30 million documents which can help to shed light on the fate of so many.

The alphabetically and phonetically arranged Central Name Index contains over 50 million reference cards for over 17.5 million people and is the main key to the documents and the correspondence files'. The »ITS collections comprise information about »Incarceration, »Forced Labour, the Post-War Period (»Displaced Persons) and the »Child Tracing Branch.