The existence of 618 hitherto unacknowledged Nazi concentration camps is expected to be confirmed shortly by the International Tracing Service, operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The information is understood to be contained in a 650-page volume to be published by the Tracing Service, which is based in Arolsen, near Kassel in West Germany. It will be only the third such volume published by the Service, its first since 1951.
The publication should be of practical help to hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims who have been unable to claim compensation from West Germany because their places of detention were not named in previous official lists.
The new volume, it is learned here, will increase the number of known forced labor camps for Jews inside and outside Nazi Germany by 172–from 769 to 941. The number of known concentration camps in Austria for deported Hungarian Jews leaps from 38 (the figure established in 1969) to 223.
An entirely new category of punishment center will also be included in the new publication. These are described as “educational establishments linked to industrial sites.” But even the latest list does not claim to be complete according to an introduction written by Albert de Cocatrix, director of the Tracing Service until the end of last year.
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