News archive

Early in November 2010, Ekkehard Hübschmann investigated the fates of 15 Jews from Franconia in the archive of the International Tracing Service (ITS). “I could discover new facts for about half of the people largely drawing them from the documents on displaced persons’ camps”, Hübschmann is happy to report. The...

Eight pupils of the “Christian Rauch” secondary school at Bad Arolsen have spent a project week at the International Tracing Service (ITS). Their main topic was the “Organisation of the Holocaust”. The concrete subjects they attended to were the deportation and expropriation of the Jews and survival after the...

On a two-day visit in mid-October, Annemieke van Bockxmeer, Petra Links and Tim Veken from the National Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) viewed the documentary holdings and database of the International Tracing Service (ITS). The institute is interested in having access to the digital database of the ITS....

Seven members of the French organization “Orphelins de Résistants” paid a one-day visit to the International Tracing Service (ITS) and its French Liaison Mission in Bad Arolsen. The members of the association are the children and grand-children of women and men involved in the French Résistance during the Second World...

A map kept in the archive of the International Tracing Service (ITS) has contributed to ultimately clear up the fate of a prisoner from Concentration Camp Dachau and paved the way to the scholarly conclusion: the Hungarian Jew Laslo Schröter, in fact, had died on a death march in Bavarian Antdorf. “Until now, his fate...

On the occasion of the historians’ workshop dealing with the subject of death marches, Tomas Fedorovic from the Theresienstadt memorial could hand back to the International Tracing Service (ITS) 418 original cards from the Central Name Index. “Presumably the index cards were made available to the Czech tracing service,...

Jean-Luc Blondel, Director of the International Tracing Service (ITS), and Jürgen van der Horst, Mayor of the town of Bad Arolsen, invited the participants of the first workshop for historians the ITS organised on its own to an evening reception. “The goal we pursue with this workshop is to further, and give impetus...

Nine employees of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen took part in a workshop offered by the District Museum in Wewelsburg on the subject of “Identifying groups and individuals of either outright right-wing extremism or suchlike tendencies“. Thanks to the opening of the Arolsen archive and the...

Leo and Henk van’t Hul also received personal effects belonging to their father Gerardus at the Amersfoort Memorial yesterday. They have been researching his fate since 2004. “Our mother seldom spoke about his imprisonment and death,” said Leo. “Not until a nephew phoned about the family tree did we find out about our...

“Many emotions have been stirred up inside me,” said Arnold van Dam. “It is very moving to hold my father´s personal possessions in my hands. ”Sixty-five years after the end of the Second World War, the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen returned a wallet to the Dutchman yesterday containing...