News

On May 19, 2017 Karen Franklin, Director of Family Research at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, updated herself about the processing of inquiries and the status of digitization at the International Tracing Service(ITS). It was her first visit to Bad Arolsen. "I can feel an impressive commitment to easing access to...

Travelling circus people during the National Socialist era are the focus of an interdisciplinary European research project. Project director Malte Gasche of the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki describes the background and aims of the research and the project’s use of various events to reach the...

Gustave Oeyen, a member of the resistance, survived the hardships of imprisonment in the Neuengamme concentration camp. The fact that some of his personal belongings have been preserved as effects came as a complete surprise to his son. Jean-Marie Oeyen recently visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) to claim...

It was commemoration and recognition that brought the one-time prisoner of war and concentration camp inmate Alexandr Afanasjew to Germany shortly before May 9, the day marking Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany. The ninety-four-year-old came to the International Tracing Service (ITS) with his daughter and...

On 3rd May 1945 more than 6,000 concentration-camp prisoners died during the bombardment of the ships “Cap Arcona” and “Thielbek” in the Bay of Lübeck. The International Tracing Service (ITS) holds documentation on the identification of those who died from the maritime catastrophe as well as documents relating to the...

On April 29, 1945, the U.S. Army received marching orders to liberate the Dachau concentration camp. On their arrival at the camp, 32,000 survivors—many of whom were seriously ill—awaited them. The “first meeting of the International Inmates’ Committee in the liberated Dachau camp” took place the very next day. The...

How can the ITS make the most effective use of its research capacity? In the interview Henning Borggräfe, Head of the Research and Education Branch, talks about new projects and promoting research.

Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is observed on the 27th of Nissan in the Jewish calendar, falls on April 24 this year. This Israeli memorial day commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and is dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The central theme of this year’s...

When the first American soldiers reached the gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp at around 5:00 pm on April 11, 1945, inmate resistance groups had already taken control of the camp.

International Roma Day on April 8 celebrates the multifarious Romani cultures and their histories. Initiatives and associations also welcome it as an opportunity to call for action against the massive discrimination of Europe’s largest ethnic minority. Even after centuries of persecution and their systematic murder by...