Whereas the International Tracing Service (ITS) archives
located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, which are administered by the International
Committee of the Red Cross, contain an estimated 50,000,000 records on the
fates of some 17,500,000 individual victims of Nazi war crimes;
Whereas the ITS archives at Bad Arolsen remain the largest
closed Holocaust-era archives in the world;
Whereas, although access to individual records can be
requested by Holocaust survivors and their descendants, many who have requested
information from the ITS archives have reported facing significant delays and
even unresponsiveness;
Whereas the ITS archives remain inaccessible to
researchers and research institutions;
Whereas the Agreement Constituting an International
Commission for the International Tracing Service, signed at Bonn June 6, 1955
(6 UST 6186) (commonly known as the Bonn Accords
) established an
international commission of 11 member countries (Belgium, France, Germany,
Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom,
and the United States) charged with overseeing the administration of the ITS
Holocaust archives;
Whereas, following years of delay, in May 2006 in
Luxembourg, the International Commission of the ITS agreed upon amendments to
the Bonn Accords that would allow researchers to use the archives and would
allow each member country of the International Commission to receive digitized
copies of archive materials and make the records available to researchers under
the respective national laws relating to archives and privacy;
Whereas the May 2006 amendments to the Bonn Accords
require each of the 11 member countries of the International Commission to
ratify the amendments before open access to the Holocaust archives is
permitted;
Whereas, although the final signature was affixed to the
amendments in October 2006, only 5 out of the 11 member countries of the
International Commission, the United States, Israel, Poland, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom, have ratified the amendments;
Whereas the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has
for years been working tirelessly to provide public access to the materials in
the Bad Arolsen archives;
Whereas, on March 8, 2007, representatives from the 11
member countries of the International Commission of the ITS met in the
Netherlands and reviewed the current ratification status of each country and
the ratification process in its entirety;
Whereas it is a moral and humanitarian imperative to
permit public access to the millions of Holocaust records housed at Bad
Arolsen;
Whereas it is essential that researchers obtain access
while Holocaust survivors are living, so that the researchers can benefit in
their scholarly work from the insights of eyewitnesses;
Whereas, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, there have
been far too many instances of survivors and heirs of Holocaust victims being
refused their moral and legal right to information, for restitution purposes,
slave labor compensation, and personal closure;
Whereas opening the historic records is a vital
contribution to the world’s collective memory and understanding of the
Holocaust and efforts to ensure that the anti-Semitism that made such horrors
possible is never again permitted to take hold;
Whereas anti-Semitism has seen a resurgence in recent
years, and as recently as December 2006, the President of Iran, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, held the second Holocaust denial conference in Tehran in one year;
and
Whereas in light of this conference, the anti-Semitic
rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad, and a resurgence of anti-Semitism in part of
the world, the opening of the archives at Bad Arolsen could not be more urgent:
Now, therefore, be it
That the Senate—
(1)commends in the strongest terms all
countries that have to date ratified the amendments to the Agreement
Constituting an International Commission for the International Tracing Service,
signed at Bonn June 6, 1955 (6 UST 6186) (commonly known as the Bonn
Accords
) to allow for open access to the Holocaust archives of the
International Tracing Service (ITS) located at Bad Arolsen, Germany;
(2)commends the
countries that have committed to expedite the process of releasing the archives
and expects those countries to abide by their commitments;
(3)strongly urges all countries that have to
yet to ratify the amendments to abide by the treaty obligations made in May
2006 and to expedite the ratification of the amendments;
(4)strongly urges all member countries of the
International Commission of the ITS to consider the short time left to
Holocaust survivors and unanimously consent to open the ITS archives should all
countries not ratify the amendments by May 2007;
(5)expresses the hope
that bureaucratic and diplomatic processes will not further delay this process;
and
(6)refuses to forget
the murder of 6,000,000 Jews and more than 5,000,000 other victims during the
Holocaust by Nazi perpetrators and their collaborators.