Digitisation of the Archives

There are documents of enormous historical significance stored by the International Tracing Service. It is important that they are preserved and protected for future generations. The electronic archives - that are used by historians for their research and the staff in order to answer inquiries - protect the valuable original documents from further wear and tear through daily use.

In a major project currently tying up about one third of the staff the International Tracing Service is busy digitalising its documents. In addition to their sheer volume, the disparity of the documents represents a great challenge too. Loose sheets of paper, questionnaires, index cards, and bound books in all conceivable formats have to be digitalised in such a way that this does as little damage to the paper as possible.

In the meantime the digital archives have 88 million images and more than 6.5 terabytes of data. This includes:

• Documents on incarceration in concentration camps, ghettos and prisons (ca. 18 million images)
• the ITS central name index (ca. 42 million images)
• registration cards of Displaced Persons (ca. 7 million images)
• documents on forced labour (ca. 13 million images)
• documents on DP Camps and emigration (ca. 5 million images)
• general documents and the inventory from the children’s tracing branch (ca. 2 million images)
• 76,000 correspondence files (ca. 1.2 million images)

The correspondence the ITS has had with victims, their family members and authorities is presently being scanned. So far, the ITS has scanned and indexed about 95 percent of the original documents kept in its archives. The scanning of the three million correspondence files will take some years' time still.