What is the International Tracing Service?
The International Tracing Service archive (ITS) is located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and until November 2007, when the Museum-led effort to open it succeeded, it was the largest closed Holocaust archive in the world. The archive was established by the Allied powers after World War II to help reunite families separated during the war and to trace missing family members. The Allies placed in the ITS millions of pages of documentation that they captured during the war. Since then, the archive has continued to grow as new records, both originals and copies, have been deposited there. The archive is overseen by an 11-nation International Commission comprised of Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The archive is administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
