The U.S. Senate approved a resolution commemorating Yom
Hashoah and calling for access to Holocaust archives in Bad Arolsen,
Germany. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) introduced the resolution this week, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday.The archives contain information on more than 17 million victims of the Nazis. The
archives have been under the jurisdiction of the International Tracing
Service archive started by the Allied forces at the end of
World War II, but access has been limited. “It
is important for the United States Senate to stand unanimously with
communities the world over in marking Yom Hashoah,” said Biden, who
chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It
is also important to stand unanimously and ask more than 60 years
after the end of World War II, why is it still so hard to access files
documenting the Nazis’ atrocious acts?” In order to allow for open access, each member of the International
Commission of the International Tracing Service – the United States,
Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom – must ratify the May 2006
amendments to the 1955 Bonn Accords. Only the United States, Israel,
Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have done so. The commission will meet next month in Amsterdam.
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