Memoria [EN] No. 16 (01/2019) | Page 49

Although the origins of the ITS go back to World War II, the archives were unavailable for public research for over half a century. The Allied powers first created a central tracing office in early 1943 in order to trace and register people displaced by the war and Nazi persecution. For decades after World War II, the ITS was busy helping to locate missing individuals, to reunite separated families, and to provide people with the documentation necessary to receive assistance or reparations for their persecution.

After many years of pressure to open its collections to public research, copies of the ITS digital archives first became publicly available in November 2007 and are now accessible at several institutions around the world. Because these collections are so vast and have only been available for public research for a short time, scholars are still exploring the possibilities within the millions of documents in the ITS digital archives.

Designed primarily for the use of students in undergraduate university courses on the Holocaust, this new series of educational supplements contains documents from the archives of the ITS and photographs from the collections of USHMM and the Wiener Library. Translations have been provided where necessary, and each supplement contains an introductory essay by a scholar with expertise on the volume’s topic. Users are also given contextual information about each document, recommended reading lists, ideas for further research and discussion, and guidance for conducting research in the ITS digital archives.