From the International Tracing Service (ITS), we learn …
The International Tracing Service (ITS) has published two further
resources in its online archive. They include the card index of the Reich
Association of Jews in Germany and material on death marches from
concentration camps.
What is
left of the card index of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany
(Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) comprises 32,264 registration
cards, primarily those of Jewish school pupils, emigrants and deceased persons.
Now interested persons all over the world have access to these cards. The ITS
has moreover placed an additional 15,000 documents pertaining to the death
marches online, thus supplementing the first group of documents on that subject
published on its internet portal last year. “We chose two sets of documents that,
while they are small, are of especial interest to the public. They conclude the
successful test phase of the online archive,” ITS director Floriane Hohenberg
explained. “More extensive holdings will follow, with which we aim to make
documents on deportations, the Holocaust and forced
labor available to people all over the world.”
The archive
of the ITS in Bad Arolsen is one of the largest collections of documents on
Nazi persecution and the aftermath of those crimes. In order to provide as many
interested persons as possible access to this material, which holds the status
of UNESCO world documentary heritage, the ITS set up an online archive in 2015.
It offers direct access to the documents along with descriptions of the various
holdings. The work of indexing the archives goes hand in hand with the
continual expansion of the portal. With the new online placement a central
search function has been expanded, allowing comprehensive research on names of
people and places throughout the available collections. The ITS has placed a
total of some 170,000 images (80,000 documents) in its Online-Archive.
A card
index full of stories about Jewish victims of persecution
Only a
small proportion of the card index of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany
has come down to us. In addition to names, the cards contain such information
as dates of birth, professions, and addresses from the period before the mass deportations
of the Jewish population, which began in 1941. Hermann Göring ordered the
founding of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany in 1939. All persons
classified as Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws were obligated to register.
The card index aided the Gestapo in organizing the deportations. Between 1947
and 1950, 32,264 cards from this index made their way into the ITS archive.
They include, for example, the “Berlin school pupils index” testifying to the
lives of Jewish children during persecution and containing biographical data on
the children themselves and their parents as well as information on the schools
they attended.
Before
publishing the card index of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany in its
online portal, the ITS carried out a pilot project to prepare the cards for use
for research purposes.
Documents
on the death marches
In the late
1940s, the ITS undertook to reconstruct the death marches and compile
eye-witness reports as well as maps showing the locations of graves. In 1950,
the so-called “Identification Unit” was founded with the goal of giving the often
unknown dead their names back. The documents on the frequently successful
efforts to identify the victims of National Socialism now supplement the
holdings on the death marches in the ITS’s online archive.
In the
online archive of the ITS, the death marches are shown on a map with
georeferenced documents. When users click the name of a town or village, the
documents related to that place appear on the screen, for example the answers
to questionnaires that were sent to the communities or – recently added – the
material on the identification program.
Link to the
online archive: digitalcollections.its-arolsen.org
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