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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...

He bears the same name as his uncle who was detained in a concentration camp by the Nazis in 1944. Now, Marcel Uytdenhoef was able to collect the personal belongings confiscated from his uncle when he was detained. “We had no idea these effects existed,” the Belgian said, who, on September 27th 2016, came to the...

Monika Grütters, the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen on Monday to learn about its work and gain an insight into its extensive archive. The archive holds around 30 million documents relating to Nazi persecution, forced labor...

From 1943 until 1945 Cornelis de Zeeuw had to do forced labor in the Harz region for the Nazi Regime. His family regrets never asking him specifically about the two years he spent as a forced laborer. Now, a few years after Cornelis de Zeeuw’s death, his grandson has started the search for more information.

His family only had a single photo of Prosper de Rijcke, who died on November 30, 1944, in a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. But now they also have a pocket watch – a personal effect that had been taken from the Belgian man when he was arrested a few months before his death. “It’s unbelievable,...

Over a period of four years, the filmmaker Carmen Eckhardt of Cologne researched the circumstances surrounding, and reasons for, the execution of her great-grandfather Viktor Kunz by the Nazis. She documented his biography, her own search, and her sometimes very difficult dealings with German institutions in the film...

The Holocaust survivor Max Mannheimer died last Friday at the age of 96. Mannheimer tirelessly reminded his contemporaries of the crimes committed during the Nazi period and engaged in an ongoing struggle against oblivion. He had survived the Terezín ghetto and the Auschwitz, Warsaw and Dachau concentration camps. The...