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Tensions Rise In Long Feud Over Access To Nazi Archive
Udo Jost combs through Nazi-era records in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The International Tracing Service keeps 50 million records from World War II with names of millions of Holocaust victims, war refugees and forced laborers.
(By Craig Whitlock -- The Washington Post)
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Many leading Holocaust researchers dismiss such concerns, noting that archives around the world successfully protect privacy. They blame bureaucrats from the German Interior Ministry for the impasse.
"They are the principal opponent to the whole thing, and it's very difficult for me to understand why," said Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the Holocaust museum in Washington. "Invariably, at the end of the day, the German representatives always put restrictions back on the table that they are absolutely insistent about."
German Interior Ministry officials involved in negotiations declined to comment. Sonja Kreibich, a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry, said the government favors opening the archives. But "what has to be found is a common solution toward the legal questions, including issues of privacy and liability," Kreibich said. "Finding that solution is quite complicated."
Germany does not need to worry that documents in the archive would trigger a new round of compensation lawsuits, experts say, because deadlines in most class-action settlements have passed.
Researchers and diplomats point to the director of the tracing service, Charles C. Biedermann of Switzerland, a Red Cross employee, saying he has worked behind the scenes to keep the records bottled up.
Johannes Houwink ten Cate, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, said Biedermann and the tracing service staff were reluctant to give up control because of an insular culture and fear for their jobs. He said the original mission to trace the whereabouts of refugees had inevitably changed but that the service was unprepared to adapt to a new role as a historical research center.
"They're not unlike the Japanese soldiers who stayed behind in the jungle and were finally discovered" after decades in hiding, he said. "They are continuing to ignore the outside world. The outside world has changed, but they have not."
In an interview last week, Biedermann said he wanted the service to open to the public but that the decision was up to the 11-country commission. "I absolutely hope it will be done," he said. "I'm sure if there's a will, there's a way."
He said his critics misread his motives. He said he had led efforts to scan the records, which would allow easy sharing of the documents with other countries. "That's the best proof that we are for opening the records," Biedermann said.
Meanwhile, Dutch, French and American diplomats are pushing a group of scholars and legal experts to find a compromise to submit to the tracing service's annual meeting May 17 in Luxembourg.
"It's been almost 61 years now since the end of World War II and the Holocaust," said Edward B. O'Donnell Jr., the State Department's ambassador and special envoy for Holocaust issues. "It's time to open all records of the Holocaust, and that certainly remains a priority for the United States."
