Bad Arolsen: So arbeitet der Internationale Suchdienst ITS
Bad Arolsen, 17. Dezember 2013: Dokumentation, Information und Forschung: Beim Internationalen Suchdienst (ITS/International Tracing Service) in Bad Arolsen sind 50 Millionen Dokumente archiviert, die Hinweise auf das Schicksal von 17,5 Millionen Menschen während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus und des zweiten Weltkriegs geben. Die Klärung von Schicksalen ist auch in der heutigen Zeit noch eine der Hauptaufgaben. Zu den bekanntesten Dokumenten des Archivs zählt zum Beispiels eine Durchschrift von Schindlers Liste. Seit 2013 gehört der ITS zum Weltdokumentenerbe der UNESCO.
Archiving Atrocity: The Intl. Tracing Service and Holocaust Research -- Suzanne Brown-Fleming
(Visit: The International Tracing Service, one of the world’s largest Holocaust-related archival repositories, holds millions of documents detailing the many forms of persecution that transpired during the Nazi era and their continuing repercussions. Based on her recently published book, Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research, Suzanne Brown-Fleming provides new insights into human decision-making in genocidal settings, the factors that drive it, and its far-reaching consequences. Brown-Fleming is director of the Visiting Scholar Programs of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is presented here by the Holocaust Living History Workshop at UC San Diego.
Series: Writers [5/2017] [Show ID: 31541]
Bad Arolsen Archives - Part I
Recorded December 17, 2006
Menschen ohne Heimat: Ausstellung des Suchdienstes Bad Arolsen
Bad Arolsen/Frankfurt, 18. September 2014: In Frankfurt läuft derzeit eine Ausstellung des Internationalen Suchdienstes Bad Arolsen (ITS). Wir sprachen mit Abteilungsleiterin Dr. Susanne Urban über die Ausstellung und die Aktualität des Themas heimatloser Menschen.
Fellow Spotlight: Rebecca Boehling
Rebecca Boehling, the Academy's Berthold Leibinger Fellow in fall 2016, is a professor of history and an affiliate professor of Judaic studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she was the founding director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities. From 2013 to 2015 she directed the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, which archives collections about Nazi persecution, forced labor, the Holocaust, and post-WWII Displaced Persons. Boehling is the author of A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (Berghahn, 1996) and Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family’s Untold Story (Cambridge, 2011), based on some 600 German-Jewish family letters written primarily between 1933 and 1955. In her Academy project, Denazification and Transitional Justice: American, British, and French Approaches to Purging Nazi Influence in Postwar Germany, she assesses Western Allies’ approaches to the process of undoing Nazi influences in postwar German society, examining the divergent theories behind denazification and how they were implemented.
Nazi files are a step closer to being opened to researchers
Bad Arolsen, Germany - 22 May, 2006
1. Wide of building of archive of International Tracing Service ITS, the arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is the archive's custodian
2. Sign of International Tracing Service ITS, with the name of the ITS in English, French and German
3. Wide of room with documents being archived by names
4. Close-up of card box
5. Pan of room with documents about people forced into slave labour
6. Close-up of identity card for slave labourers, reading (in German) German Reich - working book for foreigners
7. Udo Jost, archive manager for the tracing section, with folder
8. Room with folders about concentration camps
9. Close-up of door label reading Auschwitz - Bergen-Belsen - Breendonk - Buchenwald (names of concentration camps)
10. Udo Jost with folder
11. Close-up of (in German) Totenbuch - book of the dead (camera zooms out) book of the dead on card box
12. SOUNDBITE: (German) Udo Jost, archive manager for the tracing section at ITS
In my opinion, the decision was long overdue. As soon as the digitalisation work is finished, historians will have the opportunity to analyse the data also for their purposes.
13. Close-up card box with label reading Mauthausen (Nazi camp in Austria) - men - alphabetically
14. SOUNDBITE: (German) Udo Jost, archive manager for the tracing section at ITS
If you think about being able to describe single fates in a more detailed way or to deduce tendencies and developments from single fates, the documentation compiled here in Arolsen surely will contribute to gain new knowledge, yes.
15. Wide of scanning room
16. Staff member scanning document pan to computer monitor with document appearing on screen
17. Staff member scanning
18. Staffer with documents leaving room where requests for information are stored
AP File (mute)
Auschwitz Camp Poland
19. Prisoners in living quarters
20. Prisoners standing behind barbed wire fence
21. Various of bodies in mass graves
Jerusalem, Israel - May 21, 2006
22. Wide exterior of Yad Vashem Holocaust museum
23. Various set up shots of Doctor Yaacov Lozowick, Director of Archive Division, Yad Vashem
SOUNDBITE: (English) Doctor Yaacov Lozowick, Director of Archive Division, Yad Vashem
Well originally the place didn't regard itself as an archive it regarded itself as an office giving a specific public service, which they continue to give till this very day, which is to give documentation to individuals about themselves or first degree family members. It took years for them to realise that they'd actually become inadvertently become an archive and they should behave like an archive. And once that understanding was there, there was all sort of bureaucratic and diplomatic that needed to have prodding that needed to happen in order to make it really happen.
24. Cutaway researchers reading
25. Close up of woman
26. Close up of book Holocaust and Genocide
27. SOUNDBITE: (English) Doctor Yaacov Lozowick, Director of Archive Division, Yad Vashem
AP File (mute/black and white)
Auschwitz Camp Poland
28. Various shots of people walking in fenced off area
29. Various shots of children showing tattoos on their arms
LEAD IN :
June 6, 2006, marks the 61st anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Some 12 (m) million people were killed during the war by the Nazis in death camps.
Now an international agreement is in the process of being ratified that could see researchers across the world gain access to 50 million Nazi files, that describe the mechanics of mass murder.
The archive has been locked away since World War II in the German town of Bad Arolsen, in the custody of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
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EXPLORING DOCUMENTS – SHAPING MEMORIES
EXPLORING DOCUMENTS – SHAPING MEMORIES: THE DOCUMENTS ON INDIVIDUAL FATES AND PATHS OF PERSECUTION, AND ITS USE IN EDUCATION
Dr. Akim Jah, Scientific Assistant Pedagogy and Education Department at The International Tracing Service (ITS), Bad Arolsen / Berlin (Germany);
Nazi Archives in Arolsen 2
The Future of Holocaust testimonies III - Early Testimonies
״...My only document is the number on my hand״
Survivors kept by the International Tracing Service (ITS) Bad--Arolsen -- The
Concentration Camp and Death March Questionnaire
Dr. Susanne Urban, International Tracing Service, Bad-Arolsen, Germany
The Holocaust Studies Program of Western Galilee College, Yad Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters House held a third international interdisciplinary conference and workshop on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies.
25-27 March 2014 in Akko.
18/11/2011 - Quel avenir pour le Service International de Recherches?
Le Service International de Recherches (ITS), situé à Bad Arolsen en Allemagne, oeuvre en faveur des victimes des persécutions nazies et de leurs familles en établissant leur sort à l'aide de ses archives. Centre international de documentation, information et recherche sur la persécution national-socialiste, le travail forcé et l'holocauste, ses archives comprennent quelques 30 millions de documents datant de l'époque du national-socialisme et de l'après-guerre immédiat. L'ITS conserve ses données historiques et les rend accessibles à la recherche.
Le Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes, au nom de la Commission Internationale pour le Service International de Recherches (ITS/ International Tracing Service), le Comité international de la Croix Rouge (CICR) et le Service International de Recherches vous invitent à une conférence de presse portant sur les tâches et l'autorité responsable future de l'ITS à Bad Arolsen. La Commission internationale a convenu cette semaine de deux nouveaux accords à ce sujet. Le premier accord concerne l'élargissement des tâches de l'institution au vu de la description archivistique, la recherche historique et la pédagogie. Le deuxième accord décrit les rôle des Archives fédérales en tant que futur partenaire institutionnel.
Les directives de travail de l'ITS sont fixées par une Commission internationale, composée de onze Etats membres (Belgique, République fédérale d'Allemagne, France, Grèce, Grande-Bretagne, Israël, Italie, Luxembourg, Pays-Bas, Pologne, USA). Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, chargé de la direction de l'ITS par la Commission Internationale depuis 1955, se démettra de ses fonctions à la fin 2012.
Search OSTarbeiter Alexandra Goloto (Galota, Halota, Holoto).
If you can help with the search for Alexandra Goloto, contact me: e-mail: roger2000@tut.by
facebook: Андрей Ерошевский:
English version:
Hello!
My name is Andrew Yeroshevsky. I'm looking for my grandfather's sister - Alexandra Lvovna Goloto (other possible spellings of the name: Goloto, Golota, Galota, Holoto, Holota, Halota) and their potential descendants. Alexandra Goloto was sent to Germany as a forced laborer from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk.
I know the chances to find her alive are very small, but maybe I can find out something about her fate and also find out where she is buried. So I would fulfill the wish of my grandfather, her brother, which he pronounced to me shortly before his death.
Several years ago the International Tracing Service from the city of Bad Arolsen was looking for Alexandra Goloto in Germany. And there was a result! We could find one Alexandra Goloto. She was also an Eastern worker from the Ukraine, but she came from the city Belaya Zerkov. Unfortunately any traces of my Alexandra could not be find... I lost hope of success and did not know what else to do. But now I want to speak to all the people on this planet, tell them my story and hope for a miracle.
Alexandra Goloto was born in 1916 in the settlement of Azarichi. This is a small settlement on the border of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. At present this settlement Azarichi belongs to Russia, Bryansk region. The parents of Alexandra were Lev Iljych Goloto and Anna Filippovna Goloto. As far as I know, at that time many inhabitants of the settlement of Azarichi went to Ukraine to work in Dnepropetrovsk. Alexandra also came there.
My grandfather, her brother Pavel Goloto, saw her for the last time in Dnepropetrovsk from 1934 to 1936, when he was doing military service there.
Other information, which our family has about Alexandra Goloto, belongs to the post-war period. The sister of Alexandra, Evgeniya Goloto, got a letter from Alexandra. Alexandra asked her to send her the bedclothes. The letter came from abroad. Unfortunately that letter did not preserve in the family. Therefore, it isn’t possible now to determine, when and where the letter came from and what was the address of the sender.
The relatives tried to find Alexandra in 1974 over the Red Cross of the USSR. The search was unsuccessful.
I started my search also with the Red Cross of Belarus and at the same time I contacted the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen in Germany. From these two organizations I got an answer, that the search had revealed nothing. I also turned to the well-known Russian search service of a television program Wait for me ( and published on its web page my story under the number 1876687. Since 2011, however, I got from this search service no answer.
At this moment, I came to the following conclusions:
First, my great-aunt survived the war and sought contact with relatives. That makes a lot of hope.
Second, she somehow avoided the German registration system of the Eastern workers. Either her identity papers were destroyed or they were lost, or she could have her new papers issued to a new name, or she got a new name by marriage. Later she could have moved to another country. Which country that would have been - we can only guess.
These two conclusions suggest that Alexandra Goloto could have had offspring, who might have known her background.
And now I turn to all who have read my story to the end. If my story is similar to your family history... if you know anything about this story... if you heard something similar from you relatives who survived World War II.. if any of your ancestors ever told you anything about a girl Alexandra from Azarichi or from Dnepropetrovsk... - then please let me know. You would do a great good thing with it and I would fulfill the wish of my deceased grandfather - shed light on the fate of his younger sister. If Alexandra had offspring, I would like to meet them and to introduce them our family.
Many Thanks!
With hope for a miracle,
Andrey Eroshevsky
[HLHW] Missing: The Fate of the Nazi Concentration Camp Archives - with JJ Surbeck
Since its founding in 1863, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC, the Swiss private organization which many have dubbed the “Guardian of the Geneva Conventions”) has helped reunite POWs and uprooted civilians with their families. The Nazi conquest of most of Europe resulted in the displacement of millions of individuals. Beginning in 1943, the British Red Cross and the ICRC began the work of tracing victims of incarceration, forced labor, and relocation. This effort eventually led to the establishment of the International Tracing Service (ITS), also known as the Bad Arolsen Archive. The year 2015 will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the ITS’ work under the direction of the ICRC. A Swiss-educated attorney living in San Diego, J.J. Surbeck worked for 16 years for the ICRC and knows its history and workings intimately.
Tracing Your Family Roots 177 - Visit to ITS
Sallyann Sack, who just returned from ITS (International Tracing Service) in Arolson, Germany explained the advantages of a person doing
research there. She and Gary Mokotoff will lead the first tour there, from May 5 to 9, to do Holocaust research. The overall index which includes everyone who even asked about anyone is available only there. To register for the trip contact Gary Mokotoff.
Sidney Sachs
Understanding the International Tracing Service
December 6, 2015
Illustrated lecture by Dr. Diane Afoumado, Chief of the ITS Research Branch at the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Dr. Afoumado will provide a background on what can be found within this archive and how it can be used for research.
Website:
Genealogists pour over Nazi files made public after 60 years
SHOTLIST
1. Exterior of International Tracing Service (ITS)
2. Close of ITS sign on building
3. Various of two genealogists searching through name registers of victims of the Nazi regime held in ITS
4. Various of genealogists and ITS staff going through documents
5. Various of a man reading through Nazi document held at the ITS
6. Close-up then pull out of two women working at computer
7. Set-up shot of Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Gary Mokotoff, genealogist:
A very important component of Jewish genealogies, what happened to members of the family that were murdered in the holocaust. That's why the International Tracing Service is so important to us. And the fact that we now have public access means that we can now come here and look at the records and find information that typically could not be found by an ITS individual doing the work for us.
9. Mid of archived Nazi documents stored in ITS
10. Set-up of Sallyann Sack genealogist
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Sallyann Sack, American genealogist:
I found something that I may not be able to talk about on camera without crying. I have an adopted cousin who survived the war as a nine year old. He was liberated from Buchenwald as a nine year old. I found here that his mother, who was separated from him when he was less than five years old, also had survived. And she came to the United States in the same year that he did. They never found each other. If these records were opened earlier, they might have found each other. I could have found those documents 20 years ago, when she was still alive.
12. Right pan of stored documents.
STORYLINE
A group of around 40 Jewish genealogists have spent the past week trawling through a trove of Nazi documents which have been made public after 60 years.
For genealogists of Jewish families, the Holocaust is both a tragedy and a black hole, because so many of the six (m) million Jewish victims disappeared without a trace.
For years, researchers hoping to fill the gaps have longed to dive into the more than 50 (m) million documents held in this German spa town of Bad Arolsen, and entrusted to the International Tracing Service (ITS).
A very important component of Jewish genealogies, what happened to members of the family that were murdered in the holocaust. That's why the International Tracing Service is so important to us, Gary Mokotoff, a genealogist who helped organise the group from Israel, the US, Britain and Australia, said on Thursday.
And the fact that we now have public access means that we can now come here and look at the records and find information that typically could not be found by an ITS individual doing the work for us, he added.
For decades after World War II, the files were used only to help find missing persons or document atrocities to support compensation claims.
But in November, the last of the 11 countries that govern the archive under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross cleared the way for public access.
Since then, interest has skyrocketed.
Erich Oetiker, deputy director of the archive, said while the staff of 400 continue to process some 1,000 tracing requests per day, there are now also near daily visits from historians or individuals eager to trace a lost person's fate or view an original document.
American genealogist Sallyann Sack suspected for years that the collection held answers to questions about her family.
In the 1980s, she put in a request trying to trace the birth parents of her adopted cousin, who had survived Buchenwald as a nine-year-old boy, then been brought by her aunt and uncle to the United States. A form letter came back saying the search had turned up nothing.
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Tracing Your Family Roots 184 - ITS Research
Dr. Sacks and Prof. Sachs discuss their recent trip along with 38 others researchers to be the first group to do research at the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolson, Germany. This is the location of all Nazi records captured by the Allied Nations.
Sidney Sachs
Twenty Years of Tracing: Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center
For 20 years the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center has been finding answers and bringing closure to thousands who lost loved ones during the Holocaust and World War Two era. We assist U.S. residents searching for proof of internment, forced/slave labor, or evacuation from former Soviet territories on themselves or family members. Begin your search by calling (410) 624-2090 or email hwvtc@arc-cmc.org.
Secret Nazi archives may be opened after fifty years
Bad Arolsen, Germany - 17 November 2006
1. Exterior of Holocaust archive building
2. Wide of room with files
3. Close up of concentration camp names Buchenwald, Colditz, Dachau on door
4. Book with list of names of Jews rounded up in Holland and transported to death camps
5. Close up of name and address of Anne Frank in list
Date and location unknown
6. STILL of Anne Frank
Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 26 April 1995
7. Wide of Anne Frank house at Prinsengracht 263
8. Entrance to secret room behind bookcase (where family hid)
9. Man walking up the stairs
10. Pan of Anne's room, left empty to commemorate her
11. Diary of Anne Frank
Bad Arolsen, Germany - 17 November 2006
12. Wide of archive room
13. Close up of card index boxes
14. Wide of list of Schindler�s jews
15. Close up of list of Schindler�s jews listing professions (names not allowed to be filmed)
16. Box with wallet and photographs of Cornelis Marinus Brouwenstijn
17. Close up of photo in box of personal effects of Cornelis Marinus Brouwenstijn
18. Passport with photograph of Cornelis Marinus Brouwenstijn
19. Jean-Luc Blondel, International Tracing Service's interim director, sitting at desk
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Jean-Luc Blondel, ITS�s interim director:
We have noticed, of course, that we have an excessive backlog we could not be ++audio is unintelligible here+++ over the past years, even if we had been working quite hard. But now we gave absolute priority to this.
Los Angeles, United States - 17 November 2006
21. Various exterior shots of Simon Wiesenthal Centre
22. Various set up shots of Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
23. SOUNDBITE (English) Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Centre:
They deserve to be remembered. The Nazis wanted to eradicate who they were, what they stood for and to destroy their future. I think that the fact that the ITS is holding such a dramatic amount of material would help flesh out history even for the casual visitor.
Bad Arolsen, Germany - 22 May, 2006
24. Close-up of (in German) Totenbuch - book of the dead (camera zooms out)
Bad Arolsen, Germany - 17 November 2006
25. File of Lebensborn programme
26. Close up of line on letter reading Lebensborn V. main department A
27. Women employees working in archive
28. Pan over storage of requests and queries
Los Angeles, United States - 17 November 2006
29. SOUNDBITE: (English) Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Centre:
What was amazing to me was to see grandchildren or sometimes children say: 'Wait a second; that's my grandfather or my father's signature. We don't have anything like that and you know what? It looks like mine'. So never mind the fact that it was a Nazi form, right, that had to be filled out. That wasn't important. Some semblance, some proof to the generation following that he actually had lived, in some ways is more important than even the details that are written down there.
Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany - 1945
30. STILL Survivors looking at corpse
31. STILL Survivors leaving the camp
Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, Germany - 16 November 2006
32. Wide of gate
33. Close up of barbed wire and flowers lying on the ground
34. Tower and concentration camp building behind barbed wire
35. Buchenwald archivist Sabine Stein sitting in front of computer
36. Computer screen with case of Ludwig Kaminski, Polish coal miner who was never heard from again after his arrest in 1939
37. SOUNDBITE: (German) Sabine Stein, head of Buchenwald archive
38. Close up of Buchenwald monument
39. Buchenwald monument with sunset
AP File - 1945
Auschwitz Camp, Poland
40. Prisoners in living quarters
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Скажи мне, как найти...
Поиск пропавших без вести в период Второй мировой войны
Международная служба розыска в г. Бад-Арользен (Германия)
работает в интересах лиц, пострадавших от нацистских преследований, а также их семей, помогая отслеживать их судьбу по архивным документам.
МСР хранит эти документы и предоставляет к ним доступ в целях проведения исследований.
Genealogy Adventures Special: Jewish Genealogy 101 with Rachel Silverman
While Season 3 of Genealogy Adventures starts in September, we have a few special episodes in store for you until then. Our first special was this Sunday, 5 May 2019.
Please join Donya and Brian as we welcome our special guest, Rachel Silverman of Silverman Genealogy.
Rachel covers:
Eastern European naming conventions - and this history behind this. Plus how to first names as a clue in your research;
Changing geo-political boundaries for Eastern European countries & Germany;
How surnames changed when Eastern European Jews began to emigrate from Europe;
The kinds of records available for Jewish genealogical research; and
A myriad of free resources available to use for your research.
And so much more!
Genealogists from different backgrounds can always learn about different research strategies from one another. Jewish genealogy has a myriad of challenges. The strategies, tips, and tricks Rachel will share will be of value to anyone who has groups of ancestors and kin who are difficult-to-impossible to research.
For more information about Rachel, please visit
RESOURCES CITED IN THIS EPISODE:
JewishGen.org
JewisGen.org/Communities (JewishGen Communities Database, for when we're talking about moving borders)
yivo.org (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
cjh.org (Center for Jewish History, NYC)
LitvakSIG.org
JRI-Poland.org
FamilySearch.org (When we're talking about name changes, I'll mention good resources for accessing US naturalization papers)
rtrfoundation.org (Routes to Roots Foundation - when talking about changing borders/different countries & repositories owning documents related to a single town)
GesherGalicia.org (a SIG website, like LitvakSIG & JRI-Poland, covering areas in former Austrian Empire/modern day Poland & Ukraine)
Holocaust resources:
its-arolsen.org/en/archives/ (International Tracing Service archives)
YadVashem.org
ushmm.org (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
mjhnyc.org (Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust)