Germany will help open secret Holocaust files

Till now, Germany had resisted efforts to open the records.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even while using mass murder to try to eradicate European Jewry and others they considered inferior, the Nazis kept scrupulous records of their work. Now, Germany is ending years of trying to keep those documents inaccessible to historians and family members of Holocaust victims.
Germany said Tuesday it had overcome its privacy concerns and will work with the United States in efforts to open the mournful files, a major stride toward making the material public. The archive houses 30 million to 50 million documents that offer a firsthand look at the treatment and condition of concentration camp prisoners, forced laborers and other Nazi victims.
If the plan gets the final approval of nine other nations that oversee the records, researchers and relatives will gain access to details about 17 million people. They include information about displaced people in camps set up by the allies after Germany was defeated in 1945.
The records are housed in the German town of Bad Arolsen.
Meeting of nations
The next step in the decades-long process is a meeting of the 11 nations in Luxembourg in mid-May to consider amending a 1955 treaty that has, effectively, limited access to the archives and copying of the documents.
"We are encouraged and we look forward to continuing the diplomatic process," the American special envoy for Holocaust issues, Edward B. O'Donnell, said in an interview.
"We still have negotiations to do," he said. "Our goal is to reach an agreement as soon as possible."
Any single country could block the archives' release. The parliaments of several of the countries would have to give their approval.
At a news conference in Washington, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country would work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives. Until now, Germany has resisted, citing privacy concerns.
Still wary
In Jerusalem, Holocaust specialist Shlomo Aharonson, a historian at Hebrew University, said, "They have shown good will, but that doesn't mean the problem has been solved."
Aharonson said the archives are supposed to contain all the names of those who died in World War II, Jews and non-Jews.
The announcement by Zypries, made at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, culminated a 20-year effort by the museum, the United States, France, Poland and some other countries to pry the archives open.
Negotiations intensified in the past four or five years and took on even greater momentum in the past two years, said Arthur Berger, spokesman for the museum.
In a meeting Tuesday with museum director Sarah Bloomfield, Zypries said Germany had changed its position and would immediately seek revision of the accord governing the archives. The process should take no more than six months, the minister said.
Families wait
Opening the archives would enable many survivors and families of victims of the Nazis to find out with more certainty than ever before what happened to their relatives.
"We are losing the survivors, and anti-Semitism is on the rise so this move could not be more timely," Bloomfield said in an interview.
She said the move was "something of moral and historical importance in a critical time."
"Overall, it makes it possible to learn a lot more about the fate of individuals and to learn a lot more about the Holocaust itself -- concentration camps, deportations, slave-enforced labor and displaced persons," Paul Shapiro, director of the museum's center for advanced Holocaust studies, said in a separate interview.
Speaking in German, Zypries said, "We now agree to open the data in Bad Arolsen in Germany. We now assume the data will be safeguarded by those countries that copy the material and use it, and now that we have made this decision we want to move forward." Her remarks were translated into English for reporters.
Restrictive law
Germany's privacy law is one of the most restrictive among the 11 countries, Shapiro said. Remaining safeguards, he said, might limit duplicating a document or prevent using the name of someone cited without the person's permission, he said.
Dissemination through the Internet also may be tightly restrained. However, privacy laws of the other countries will now prevail, he said. Most are less restrictive than Germany's.
Bloomfield called the decision "a great step, a really important step." She said, "I will be completely thrilled when I get the material in the archives."
For 60 years, the International Red Cross has used the archived documents to trace missing and dead Jews and forced laborers, who were systematically persecuted by Nazi Germany and its confederates across central and eastern Europe before and during World War II.
But the archives have remained off-limits to historians and the public.
International Red Cross Committee spokesman Antonella Notari said that body is not on the 11-member decision-making panel and is not against opening the archives but believes personal information needs to be treated carefully. The international body opened its own archives a decade ago, she said.
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