Washington – After decades of holding back, Germany took a major step Tuesday toward opening Nazi records on 17 million Jews, slave laborers and other Holocaust victims to historians and relatives long anxious for conclusive information about their fate.
Germany pledged to work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives, which are housed in the German town Bad Arolsen. Eleven nations oversee the 30 million to 50 million documents and are to meet in Luxembourg next month to consider amending a 1955 treaty that has, effectively, limited access and copying.
“We still have negotiations to do,” the American special envoy for Holocaust issues, Edward O’Donnell, said in an interview. “Our goal is to reach an agreement as soon as possible.”
Approval in Luxembourg would require agreement by all 11 countries. The parliaments of several of the countries would have to give their approval as well.
At a news conference Tuesday at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said her country would work with the United States on opening the archives. Until now, Germany has resisted, citing privacy concerns.
In Jerusalem, Holocaust specialist Shlomo Aharonson, a historian at Hebrew University, said, “They have shown goodwill, 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, both Jews and non-Jews.
The announcement by Zypries culminated a 20-year effort by the Holocaust 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 agreement governing the archives.
The process should take no more than six months, the minister said.
