The Arolsen archive holds millions of documents relating to Nazi victims. In the meantime, many of the documents are also available on the net. DW-author Emmanuelle Chaze discovered some of their own family history.
The archive of the Nazi atrocities is, of all things, in the tranquil town of Bad Arolsen in North Hessen. The “Arolsen Archives – the International Center on Nazi Persecution” are a centre for documentation, Information and research about national socialist persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust. Here are more than 50 million documents to store on some 17 million victims of national socialism.
I will meet the Frenchman, Jean-Paul Garcia. He came with his caravan all the way from Bordeaux to personal items of his father Antonio Garcia, a prisoner of war, to accept. These had fled from the Spain of Franco, the French resistance join. In 1944 he was arrested by the Nazis and placed in a forced-labour camps.
At the end of the war, around 5000 objects from the Nazi were handed over to Victims of first, the Red cross and, later, the Arolsen archive: watches, jewelry, letters, or photos from the concentration camps, mainly in the Neuengamme and Dachau. The archive is not the owner of the objects, but kept them only in the hope that you can someday to their rightful owners return.
Personal items of a Spanish concentration camp prisoner in Neuengamme
Meticulous German bureaucracy
Today, about 3000 personal belongings are still here, and the employees of the center continue to work tirelessly to make the owners. For Jean-Paul Garcia and his wife, it is a very emotional visit, as you get a watch, a food voucher and a Ring given.
While the Nazis tried at the end of the war, all traces of their crimes, to extinguish them, finally, in the way of what Germany can, perhaps, best: red tape. There were just too many written records of their deeds. In a previous warehouse endless rows of files, folders, and lists are now waiting for a permanent home in a safer building.
Painful Story
I was actually coming here to film footage in connection with the 80. To make the anniversary of the start of the Second world war. When I was finished with it, and inspired by the encounter with Jean-Paul Garcia, I came up with the idea to ask about the history of my own ancestors. It’s my great-great uncle. I had a vague memory that they had been interned in a forced labor camp. I have to say that I come from Alsace, which was ruled over the centuries again and again, alternately by Germany and France, and whose history was in the Second world war, is particularly complicated. The majority of Alsatian families have a painful past. It was because some of their members went into exile, in the camps were sent to or collaborated with the Nazis.
In the Arolsen archive millions of documents camps of Nazi victims
Although my family never made anything in one direction or the other had been told, had I but been afraid to dig too deep, because I was afraid that something Ugly about my Relatives find out. However, the employee of the Arolsen archive, wanted to help me. You gave my family name in their Computer, a very rare name that appears in the whole of France only a couple of dozen times.
A mouse click is often enough
Less than a Minute later, she was able to find. You have to enter on the website, only a name or a search term. “Here you are,” she said with a smile, checked the result with the lists and took out a small stack of cards and the letter B. “Look, Ludwig, Anton, Pantaleon, Xaver, you are all here.” I know the name, only it was the new international forms of Louis Antoine, Pantaleo and Xavier. A few years ago I had a little genealogical research and found out that the four great-great-uncle had been deported to Germany, I just didn’t know why. The archivist knew the answer: “We have documents. One moment, please.”
I followed her through the building, and opened a thick folder with copies of Court records. Louis B. had then been together with some friends in court, because he had been a Communist and had distributed leaflets. That earned him a six-year prison sentence at 15. April 1943 began. His brothers, in which the process log, I found, were arrested in November and sentenced to various penalties. Their alleged Offences were, according to the Judgments of high treason, specifically, because they had heard of the British BBC.
Many, many shelves with folders and files
Open-Ended Questions
I photographed all the documents and thought about what I wanted to tell my family about my discoveries, as the archivist pointed out to me that the input of the Name had yet to result in many more hits, all from Poland, and that some of the people in Berlin had settled, before they were brought back to Poland. Could it be that in Berlin, where I was almost ten years ago I moved, even distant relatives had lived, had been killed by the Nazis?
When I visited on the day the archive, I had no idea that I would find traces of my own family history. But with this brief visit, I found out more about you, than I had ever known, and that there is still a lot to discover more.