News archive

In November 2016, the American Patricia Donahue travelled to the ITS together with her sister and her cousin. They were looking for information about their grandparents who had been subjected to forced labour and about their grandparents’ six children. The past had never been discussed in their family.

Jean-Marie Vinclair knew nothing about his great-uncle Raymond Vinclair, who had been murdered by the National Socialists in July 1944. The family had kept the story a secret all those decades. It was a call from the historian Volker Issmer of Osnabrück that got the ball rolling. Now Jean-Marie Vinclair is shooting a...

As of 2017, the International Tracing Service (ITS) is a project partner of the International Volunteer Program in Germany of "Action Reconciliation Service for Peace" (ARSP). Currently, the International Program in Germany offers about 20 volunteer places. The volunteers come from various countries in Europe, from...

During this year’s school project week, the pupils of Christian-Rauch-Schule Bad Arolsen studied in some depth the life journeys of Displaced Persons (DPs) who, after the end of NS-rule, lived in Arolsen, Korbach and the Kassel area for a transitional period. For this purpose, they conducted research work for a week at...

Several institutions of Kassel and the region of Northern Hesse today founded an emergency network to improve the protection of cultural assets in libraries, museums and archives. The International Tracing Service (ITS) is one of the new network’s twelve partners.

The International Commission for the International Tracing Service (IC/ITS) convened for a two-day meeting in Bad Arolsen to discuss the goals of the ITS until the year 2020. The discussion particularly focused on improving access to the documents in the ITS archive.

In order to trace the fates of former prisoners for an exhibition planned at the Brandenburg-Görden Prison Memorial, historian Uta Fröhlich researched names and life stories at the ITS.

“My mother told me that my grandfather had died in a concentration camp when she turned forty.” The thought of his grandfather’s fate stuck in Uwe Schmeichel’s mind and he began researching it.

Holocaust survivor Eugene Black died on September 26, 2016, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, at the age of 88. Through his work for the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association and visits to Bad Arolsen, a close bond was forged between Eugene Black and the International Tracing Service (ITS) team.

Sixteen members of the Lagergemeinschaft Ravensbrück / Freundeskreis (Ravensbrück Camp Community / Circle of Friends) visited the ITS on September 30, 2016. This first visit culminated in the presentation of document copies to the descendants of concentration camp inmates, the viewing of original documents, and a tour...