The newly uploaded documents contain information on 10 million people persecuted by the Nazis. The Arolsen Archives hopes that by making the data available online, it will keep the memories of Holocaust victims alive.
In this photo from May 1945, former forced laborers from France sit on a train car in Braunschweig, Germany — awaiting repatriation to France after the Allied liberationImage: NIOD institute for war, holocaust and genocide studies
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With just a few clicks, a hand-drawn map appears on the computer screen with the words "grave registration" stamped in red ink at the top.
The yellowed piece of paper depicts the final resting place of a 33-year-old French man who was persecuted by the Nazis — his gravesite colored in green pencil.
"We published them now because we have an index. You can search and find a name that is inscribed on one of these documents. Before that it was not possible," archive director Floriane Azoulay told DW.
Over 10 million people are mentioned in the documents, many of whom were in concentration camps, death marches and forced labor camps during the Holocaust.
The archive, based in the central German town of Bad Arolsen, contains the world's most comprehensive collection of documents about the victims and survivors of Nazi persecution.
Local German authorities were required to provide details on sites were Nazi victims were buried — this document depicts the gravesite of a Frenchman who was buried in a Bavarian villageImage: Arolsen Archives
Privacy concerns had kept access to the archive largely restricted for decades, but the institution has opened its doors in recent years and has been working to make its immense collection available to all.
The recently published trove of documents stems from the US-occupied zone in southern Germany, which was the largest area occupied by the Allies after World War II.
Although the Nazis tried to destroy evidence of their crimes at the end of the war, written records of people registered with local authorities, police, companies and other institutions remained.
The American, French, British and Soviet Allied forces sought to document the crimes of the Nazi regime and find missing persons.
They ordered local German authorities to fill out forms detailing the names of foreign nationals, German Jews and stateless persons who were registered there.
City and town officials were also told to provide information on burial sites and to point out those locations on maps.
"Very often you don't have the names of the victims who were buried, but you have the nationalities," Azoulay said.
The Arolsen Archives launched its new online archive in May this year, uploading more than 13 million documentsImage: Arolsen Archives
'Something they have never seen before'
The response has been "incredible" since the documents first went online a week ago, the director added.
The website, which was made with the help of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, has seen around 40,000 users in one week — more than four times the normal visitor rate.
People have also written in to say how moved they were to be able to find information on their relatives, just by entering a name in a search box.
"In some instances, they learn something new about the fate of a loved one and in many instances it's the last trace of this person — something they have never seen before," Azoulay said.
"So there's a lot of emotion, a lot of gratitude about that," she said.
Part of the boost in interest is due in part to the archive's partnership with genealogy giant Ancestry.
The US-based company operates one of the world's largest online platforms for genealogical research and was key in creating the index that made the documents easily searchable.
Over 67% of the requests the archive received last year were from family members looking to find out more about their relatives. That figure is now likely to grow.
As part of the project cooperation, Ancestry was given permission to also publish the documents on its website — a move that has exposed a large group of family history enthusiasts to the archive.
"The Arolsen Archives have been working for eight decades, but we are still relatively unknown," Azoulay said.
She said she hopes that the media attention and cooperation with Ancestry "will draw attention to the potential of the archive and actually inspire people to look for their family members."
Looking to the future, the archive plans to continue publishing more of its 30 million original documents online, with the lists from the British occupied zone due to be released next year.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
