III 110th CONGRESS 1st Session S. RES. 142 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES April 10, 2007 Mr. Biden (for himself, Mr. Warner, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Levin, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Salazar, Mr. Casey, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Baucus, Ms. Mikulski, Mr. Obama, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Nelson of Florida, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Menendez, and Mr. Coleman) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations April 11, 2007 Committee discharged; considered and agreed to RESOLUTION Observing Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and calling on the remaining member countries of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service to ratify the May 2006 amendments to the 1955 Bonn Accords immediately to allow open access to the Bad Arolsen archives.

Whereas April 15, 2007, marks the international observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, a day to remember and mourn the millions who died during the Holocaust of World War II; Whereas thousands of Holocaust survivors, historians, and researchers are being denied access to files, located at Bad Arolsen, Germany, that tell the story of unspeakable crimes committed by the Nazis; Whereas the Bad Arolsen archives contain 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 pages of documents that record the individual fates of over 17,000,000 victims of Nazi persecution; Whereas the Bad Arolsen archives are administered by the International Tracing Service, which in turn is supervised by an international commission composed of 11 member countries established by 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); Whereas the member countries of the International Commission are the United States, Israel, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom; Whereas, in May 2006, after years of delay, the member countries of the International Commission commendably agreed to amend the Bonn Accords to make the Bad Arolsen archives public for the first time and agreed to place digitized copies of the documents in the archives at Holocaust research centers in other countries, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Whereas the May 2006 amendments will become effective only after each of the 11 member countries completes the ratification process; Whereas the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Poland, and the Netherlands have completed the ratification process; and Whereas opening the Bad Arolsen archives is an urgent matter: Now, therefore, be it

That the Senate— (1)joins people around the world in observing Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and mourning the millions who were lost during the Holocaust; (2)commends the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Poland, and the Netherlands, as the member countries of the International Commission of the International Tracing Service that have completed the ratification of the May 2006 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); (3)calls on Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg, the member countries of the International Commission that have not yet ratified the May 2006 amendments to the Bonn Accords, to do so immediately; (4)calls on the International Commission to approve the immediate distribution of copies of the documents from the Bad Arolsen archives that have already been digitized when the International Commission meets in Amsterdam in May 2007; and (5)respectfully requests the Secretary of the Senate to transmit copies of this resolution to the Secretary of State and to the ambassadors representing each of the member countries of the International Commission in the United States.