On June 16, the United States assumed the Chairmanship of the International Commission for the International Tracing Service (ITS), recently renamed the "Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution."
The U.S. delegation is headed by Cherrie Daniels, the Department of State's Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, working in close cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) as the official U.S. digital copy holder of the ITS Archive.
During the U.S. chairmanship of the International Commission (2020-2021), Special Envoy Daniels will further efforts to make the complete archive available online by 2025 for researchers and for members of the public.
The Arolsen Archives is the world's largest and most comprehensive archive on victims and survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution. The archive contains nearly 30 million documents on 17.5 million individuals, including former concentration camp inmates, forced and slave laborers and other detainees, and persons displaced in Europe during and immediately following World War II. The opening of the ITS archive to the public in 2007 and the ongoing digitization of these records has transformed the archive into an even more vital and accessible resource for advancing Holocaust education, commemoration, research and remembrance. Since 2019, the archive has made 26 million documents available online.
