For the first time, a German has assumed control of the International Tracing Service at Arolsen, where ten million documents and twenty million index cards pertaining to concentration camp prisoners are stored and catalogued for reference purposes.
The archives are located in the North Hesse town of Arolsen, where a staff of more than 200 answers some 10,000 queries a month concerned with the reunion of families separated by Nazi persecution, with questions of personal status and with indemnification matters. Founded by UNRRA shortly after the war and then continued by the Allied High Commission, the Tracing Service is now under the custody of the International Red Cross and administered by an international commission consisting of nine countries, Israel as well as West Germany among them, The commission chairmanship rotates quarterly.
From January through March, the chairman is Dr. Hardo Brueckner, a German civil servant taken over by the Foreign Office from the financial administration. The other two German members of the commission are Professor H. Grewe and Counsellor W. Hergt. Since Israel follows Germany in the alphabetical listing of participating nations, Dr. Bruckner’s successor as chairman of the international commission will be Yeshayahu Anug, chief of the Consular Section of the Israel Purchasing Mission in Cologne.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
