News

Between October and November 2017, Ildikó Barna, who has a PhD in sociology and is associate professor at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Social Sciences in Budapest, spent four weeks conducting research as an EHRI fellowship holder at the International Tracing Service (ITS)

In an interview, Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau from the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation talks about the cooperation with the International Tracing Service (ITS) from the perspective of the memorials of former concentration camps.

Since 2011, Roland Jahn has been the Federal Commissioner for Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (BStU). Digitisation, access to records, support for scientific projects and educational offers: many of the BStU's tasks are also assigned to the International Tracing Service...

British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, a distinguished expert on 20th-century German history, conducted research at the ITS in 2009 for his book “The end: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45". At the time, he said: "I was aware of the existence of the Tracing Service, however, the ITS had never been an archive in this sense, nor had...

In January 1946, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) Central Tracing Bureau moved to Arolsen in North Hesse. Two years later, it was given its current name "International Tracing Service" (ITS). The opening of the archive ten years ago also had an impact on the town and its citizens.

Who were the first visitors and how did the ITS organize the change? Nicole Dominicus is now head of the archival management department. At the opening of the archives in 2007, she was responsible for enquiries and visitor support. She relates about the time after the opening and how difficult historical research was...

In March 1998, René Manu contacted the International Tracing Service (ITS) requesting access to the documents on his father's persecution. Daniel Manu and his family had been deported from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp by the National Socialists – he was the only family member...

Aharon Leshno-Yaar was chairman of the International Commission, the ITS's supreme governing body, in 2004 and 2014. He accompanied the International Tracing Service (ITS) during the exciting phase of archive opening. As of 2016, Aharon Leshno-Yaar has been Ambassador of Israel to the European Union and NATO.

On November 28th 2007, the International Tracing Service (ITS) finally reopened its archive to researchers and visitors which had been closed to the general public for almost 25 years. The opening was the result of international protests coming from academia, politics and those persecuted by the Nazis who demanded...

Today, the International Tracing Service (ITS) published around 15,000 further documents from the "Death Marches" collection in its online archive. Cemetery plans as well as maps of and references to burial places have been added.