The well-known saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” may fairly be applied now to the monumental accomplishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in bringing the records of the International Tracing Service (ITS) of the International Committee of the Red Cross into the public domain. As can be seen on our “Letters to the Editor” page of this issue, several American Holocaust organizations (and others) have been harshly critical of USHMM for not having been demanding enough. They note that:

• The signed agreement does not permit Internet access to the records.
• One and only one institution in each of the 11-member governing nations may have a copy of the records. Americans, for example, must travel to Washington, DC, to see copies of the records and to use the database. Israelis will need to go to Yad Vashem to use that country’s copy. (On the other hand, if inquiries are made by computer or in writing, a response will come faster from USHMM than if the same inquiry is sent directly to ITS in Bad Arolsen, Germany.)

Regrettably, the critics are looking at a half-empty glass while forgetting that the glass also is half full. They overlook the enormous effort expended by Paul Shapiro and USHMM to obtain the concessions that have been achieved. For years, the previous ITS director, and even member countries of the 11-country governing council, erected obstacles and made excuses (such as privacy concerns) to refuse to make the data available to researchers. Without doubt, had USHMM and/or Yad Vashem demanded Internet access or access by any institution that wanted the data, no agreement would have been reached—and no public access would be available today.

The publicity about the success stories emanating from using the ITS data—such as the “Hitler’s Secret Archives” report on the U.S. television show 60 Minutes—seemingly has created the false impression that ITS has information about most Holocaust victims. This is not true. Rather, ITS probably has no information about most victims because most were murdered without documentation. When Jews arrived at Auschwitz and were selected for the gas chambers, no one made note of their names. When millions of Jews murdered by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen (killing squads) in Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine were marched into open trenches, no one conducted a roll call. (Although some evidence exists that the Einsatzgruppen in some towns asked for a list of the Jewish residents, we know of no case where these documents survived.)

Even though ITS has substantial information about many Jews caught up in the Holocaust, the index and files at ITS were designed for internal use only and are extremely user- unfriendly. People may search for information and find nothing even when—in reality—something of interest exists. Even if data is found, often a trained staff member is needed to interpret the material. When we visited ITS in December 2007, one of us had a case in which even the trained staff member could not understand the contents of an index card. The staff member left the computer to return beaming five minutes later. He had the original index card in his hand. On the card were field identifications pre-printed in red ink. We learned that the scanner that had digitized the index cards could not recognize red ink. The pre-printed data, therefore, had not been digitized. Now that he had the meanings of the various fields, he could interpret the index card.

Clearly, Holocaust survivors and their families should have the highest priority in access to the ITS material, but the tragedy is that the knowledge they gain likely will be lost to history. Only some of the survivors will pass along to their children the fate, as they know it, of their loved ones. Of the second generation, an even smaller fraction will pass on to the third generation the details of the family’s involvement in the Holocaust. Even less knowledge will go to the fourth generation, until a generation will exist that can say little more than they understand that family members were murdered in the Holocaust. Consider how many families even today can state only that “some members of my family were murdered in the Holocaust.” How many children of Holocaust survivors sadly report today that a parent died without ever having revealed what happened to his or her family?

From these considerations it follows that the most important people to have access to the records—after the immediate needs of Holocaust survivors and their families are met—should be the genealogists, the true family historians. Within the coming century, the fate of individual victims will be relegated to dusty archives or outdated electronic media. As family historians, we will make a permanent record of the members of our families murdered in the Holocaust. These records, showing how these victims were part of an extended family, will remain for centuries.

If satisfying the complaints and demands of the survivors were a requirement for public access to the ITS records, we would have no public access today. What we have been given is half the loaf. Now that we have it, we should go back and ask for the rest of the loaf. It is important that the records be made accessible on the Internet. No good reason exists to deny it. Equally important, copies must be given to countries that are not members of the governing council. Australia’s population, for example, includes a large number of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Some mechanism must be found to allow a copy of the data to go to that part of the world and others as well.