Get Free Access to Millions of Recently Digitized Holocaust Records
Records of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution have become more readily available through newly digitized archives . A joint initiative by Ancestry.com and the Arolsen Archives , an international center for the persecution of the Nazis, led to the digitization of millions of records from that era. And unlike many of the other features of a genealogy research site, this archive will be available to everyone for free , with or without a subscription.
According to a blog post by Ancestry , the collection contains millions of names and other information about some of the people affected by the Holocaust and Nazi persecution. Although these records were previously available, they were much more difficult to access, requiring manual request for copies of documents. All of them are now searchable on the Internet.
How to search records
If you have previously had difficulty finding information about relatives or others who were displaced during World War II, these records can help identify people leaving Germany and other European ports, in addition to those deemed “non-citizens” persecuted in the occupied territories.
If you do not understand German, you may need the help of a translator, or you can use any number of translation sites and applications to at least understand the general essence of what is at stake. But you might as well be in luck, because some of the recordings are also available in English (just don’t count on it).
Two separate databases are available in this archive: passenger lists of displaced persons from Africa, Asia and Europe (1946-1971) and Europe, “Registration of foreigners and persecuted Germans (1939-1947)” . These archives feature Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern Europe and some non-European countries.
You don’t need to know which database might be most useful for your purposes: you can access all records with a single search. But you also have the option to search each database individually to narrow it down a bit. There are options to search by name, date of birth and place, destination, or to view records by region of resettlement. There are over 11 million records and 1.2 million images between the two databases.