Donation to help Holocaust search

A $1 million gift to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will help survivors and victims’ families access an extensive database on 17.5 million people.The donation by Norman and Irma Braman of Florida will assist the Washington museum in opening up and disseminating information from the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The service, the largest closed-access Shoah database in the world, is under the control of 11 nations, including Germany.In 2006, Germany lifted its long-standing objection to opening the archive, and the Bramans’ gift will expedite the museum’s process of allowing survivors and families to view the documents at the museum and on-line.”The information contained in the ITS archive may provide answers to many survivors’ questions about the fates of their loved ones – questions they have waited more than 60 years to have answered,” Norman Braman said in a statement. After transferring the approximately 50 million documents to the museum, the museum must develop software to make it searchable, upgrade its hardware to support the files and train staff to search its contents.