Documenting the Holocaust

last updated 8 January 2015

Bad Arolsen, Germany

After years of resisting, Germany last week announced that it would make public 30 million to 50 million documents that chronicle the individual fates of some 17 million Holocaust victims. The grimly meticulous Nazi files, stored in a former SS barracks, contain death certificates, medical records, and other documents that attach personal details to crimes largely known only by their unfathomable numbers. Since the end of World War II, the files have been available to the International Red Cross to help people trace relatives, but German privacy laws prohibited scholars from studying them. Historians said the material would help sharpen public understanding of the Holocaust. “Every true and personal story, every fate solidly documented,” said historian Frederick Taylor, “represents a small nail in the coffin of Holocaust denial.”