News archive

Veroniki Finitsi has been investigating the fate of prisoners from Greece in the archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS) at Bad Arolsen. Making more complete or exact the data available on the approximately 400 men deported from Heracleon/Crete at the time is the main focus of her scholarly research. “This...

Holocaust survivor Adam (Adolek) Kohn became famous overnight thanks to one video showing him and his family dancing to the song “I will survive” in front of the entrance of Concentration Camp Auschwitz. His action met with a most varied response worldwide ranging from total rejection to utter enthusiasm. The ITS, in...

To get an idea of the documents’ collections kept in the ITS archives and the organization’s activities, founding Director Marcello Pezzetti and his assistant Sara Berger from the Museo della Shoah (Shoah Museum) in Rome were paying a one-day visit to the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen in...

Stephan Janker of the Episcopal Ordinariate in Rottenburg am Neckar recently spent a week at the International Tracing Service (ITS) researching the deportation of Sinti and Roma from Baden-Württemberg to the concentration camp Auschwitz. “I´m more interested in the ‘why’ than the ‘wherefore’. My intention is to give...

Waclaw Rubinstein had survived the Holocaust. The thing he longed most for after the Second World War had come to an end finally was a new home. To make this wish come true, he pinned his hopes on the International Refugee Organization that in fact helped and gave him the status of a displaced person (DP)....

Odile Welfelé, Christian Oppetit, Vincent Bouat and Michel Kerbellec from the French National Archives paid a three-day information visit to the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen. The National Archives will presumably be the recipient of a copy of the ITS documents next year. The French archivists...

Victims of the Salzgitter-Drütte satellite camp have been the focus of the recent research conducted by Elke Zacharias and Meike Weth. This week at the archive of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, the two historians thoroughly examined the documents on the first 50 prisoners who had been transported...

Professor Rainer Hering, Head of the State Archives of Schleswig-Holstein, visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) for one day in mid-July. He wanted to see the latest developments of the archive for himself. On 8 October 2010, he will be taking part in a round table discussion entitled  “Open at Last: The...

This week Wadim, Sergej and Valentina Martens traveled 1725 km from Kiev, Ukraine to Bad Arolsen, Germany. They made the trip for one reason: to personally thank the International Tracing Service (ITS) staff for reuniting their family with relatives in Australia. “A letter or postcard would not have been...

Jan van Ommen spent a day at the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen viewing documents on nearly 200 Dutch women. They had been deported from the Herzogenbusch (Vught) concentration camp to Ravensbrück when the Allied forces moved closer in September 1944. “My mother Rinsje was one of these women,” says...