The governments of West Germany, Poland, Hungary and Rumania have independently agreed to share their heretofore confidential archives of the Holocaust period with scholars from Israel’s Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, it was announced by Abraham Spiegel, chairperson of the Los Angeles Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, its West Coast affiliate.
“We are very anxious to have access to this material,” Spiegel noted, “for it will enable us to make significant advances in repairing the patchwork of the history of the period. We will be able to trace the fates of individuals, of communities, of the development of a genocide which should never again happen to any people on earth.”
The German state central archive in Ludwigsburg, which contains essential information on Nazi war criminals, will be available for researchers to take whatever is considered necessary back to the Yad Vashem research facility. While the Polish archives have been accessible to scholars for about three years, they, like those of the other Eastern European countries, will be open to exchange with the Jerusalem-based facility.
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of documents are contained in these resources, which include those of the Jewish communities as well as the state. “We don’t know why these materials have been opened up to us at this point,” Spiegel stated. “We must act quickly lest the opportunity be withdrawn. Let us hope that this marks the beginning of a new understanding of peoples.”
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.
