Millions of Holocaust and Nazi persecution records now searchable online
Anyone can now search online for relatives displaced by the Holocaust and Nazi persecution after millions of records were digitized for the first time.
Names and other critical information will be searchable as part of two record collections published by Ancestry this week using digital images of documents from the Arolsen Archives, a center that keeps files protected by the United Nations on victims of Nazi persecution and National Socialism.
Ancestry, a genealogy company that provides at home DNA kits, digitized names and other information in the records, which includes lists of Holocaust survivors and former inmates of concentration camps.
The two archives, found at ancestry.com/alwaysremember, can be used to identify immigrants who left Germany and other parts of Europe for refuge in the United States and elsewhere. The database also includes lists of people living in Germany who were persecuted by public institutions or corporations.
Getting access to these records used to require manual requests for copies of the documents, which the Arolsen Archives first had to locate.
One collection tracks passenger lists of displaced persons in Africa, Asia and Europe, including people who left Germany and other ports between 1946 and 1971. Most of the immigrants in this archive of 1.7 million records are Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and forced laborers.
Another collection of 9.97 million records is a register of those living in Germany and Nazi-occupied territories between 1939 and 1947.
Ancestry will also donate copies of the digitized records to the Arolsen Archives, as well as the 11-nation International Commission of digital copy holders of the archives, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The organization will be able to put the records online too.
Ancestry plans on adding even more documents from the Arolsen Archives in early 2020, including records from outside the American Zone of post-war occupied Germany.
_New York Daily News
