WIESENTHAL CENTER URGES MEMBERS OF INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION TO OPEN HISTORIC HOLOCAUST ARCHIVE

Opening the archives would “strike a collective blow against the current worldwide campaign of Holocaust denial”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center today urged the countries of Belgium, France, Italy and Greece to give their immediate approval to unseal a historic archive of Nazi concentration documents administered by the International Tracing Service. The countries are part of an 11-member nation commission that oversees the archive. Opening the archive would give Holocaust survivors and their families the crucial information needed to file restitution claims and, as Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper wrote to ambassadors of the four nations, would uncover further evidence of the mechanism of the Nazi Final Solution, “striking a collective blow against the current worldwide campaign of Holocaust denial throughout the world.”

Allowing access to the archive must be approved of all 11 member countries before the commission’s meeting next month. To date, only seven countries, including the United States, Israel, Poland and Britain, have given their approval or indicated that they would. After Iran’s Holocaust denial conference last December, Congressmen Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Alcee Hastings (D-FL), have led Congressional efforts to secure the approval of the remaining countries.