The International Tracing Service (ITS) at Bad Arolsen in Germany contains 30 million documents on concentration camp victims and millions of non-Germans -- both victims and collaborators -- who were displaced by the Second World War.

The papers were first used by the Allies to bring Nazis to justice, then to reunite parted families. They will now be opened to historians keen to expose the Nazi system at the human level.

The ITS is governed by Germany and 10 other countries. The United States pressed for the sealed archives to be opened to families and others before the last Holocaust survivors die. But a new treaty must be ratified first.

Museums to receive digital documents

At a meeting in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, officials agreed that digital copies of the Nazi-era documents could be transferred to Holocaust museums in Washington, Jerusalem and elsewhere this summer, before the treaty takes legal effect, the ITS said.

Greek, Luxembourg, Italian, Belgian and French officials assured the meeting's participants that their parliaments would ratify the change by autumn, added ITS. The other six nations have already ratified the new set-up.

The summer release means computers can be loaded with the images weeks before the launch date once the last country gives its consent.

The ITS said it had scanned all its documents dealing with incarceration, about one third of the collection. The rest includes exhaustive lists of aliens on German soil and questionnaires filled in by postwar refugees.

Access for historians

The two-day Amsterdam meeting also agreed that any documents more than 25 years old would be available to historians, the ITS said.

Rules approved Tuesday will require historians to register by name in order to access the collection. They also have to promise not to publish private data.

"This is a good compromise," said Reto Meister, the Swiss Red Cross official who is director of the archives.