United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
International Archival Acquisitions Program
The USHMM International Acquisitions and Reproduction Program is responsible for the compilation of files from European archives that document the persecution and massacre of the Jewish people in Europe.
Facts & Files cataloged and indexed index cards, files, and entire collections—including judicial records from 1933 to 1945, documents from the so-called “NS Archive” of the Ministry for State Security, files from victims’ associations (including the Association of Victims of Nazi Persecution), as well as files from GDR courts and public prosecutors’ offices regarding Nazi crimes, and other collections such as those of IG Farben and the Reich Ministry of Labor. The cataloged documents were analyzed for content, systematically indexed, and prepared for microfilming or digitization.
The first part of the project was on Nazi files which were collected from various sources by the Stasi (East German secret police). This holding was preserved at the German Federal Archives, Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten branch.
Since 2004, Facts & Files has analyzed and cataloged files on cases from courts and prosecuting attorneys between 1933 and 1945. The files concern criminal proceedings for so-called crimes such as “Rassenschande” (racial disgrace), “Hochverrat” (high treason), “Verstoß gegen das Heimtückegesetz” (violation of the treachery law), arson of synagogues, attacks on German Jews after 1933, and political criminal cases against Communists, Social Democrats, members of the clergy, and other political opponents of the Nazis.
Another facet of the project included the examination and cataloging of record groups of associations of Holocaust victims created after 1945. These holdings contain detailed information about concentration and extermination camps.
At the archive of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (now a department of the German Federal Archives) records on Nazi crimes from courts and general attorney offices of the GDR could be found. Victims were Jews, the mentally ill, prisoners of war, and other groups in ghettos, partisan areas, camps, and killing centers. Perpetrators were in the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, police battalions and regiments, the euthanasia program, the court system, ghetto and camp administrations, the Wehrmacht, and the latter’s Field Police (Feldgendarmerie) and Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei). The research was finished in 2015.
Further research and cataloging at the German Federal Archives continued within records of the IG Farben, the Reichs Labour Ministry and other record groups.
Here is an overview on the archival collection of the USHMM:
http://www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections
