Anna Meier-Osiński
The so-called effects in the archive in Bad Arolsen represent a special category in the International Tracing Service’s holdings. In the 1960s, the ITS received about 5,000 personal objects once belonging primarily to political inmates who were deported to concentration camps. The majority of these effects were secured by the British Army after the liberation of the Neuengamme concentration camp and handed over to the ITS through the Verwaltungsamt für Innere Restitution (Administration Office of Internal Restitution) in Stadthagen in the early ’60s. In addition to personal items from the Neuengamme concentration camp, the ITS also has in its holdings a substantially smaller number of effects from the Dachau concentration camp, the Hamburg Gestapo, the Ammersfort police transit camp and the Compiègne deportation camp. In the years that followed, the ITS made an effort to return the effects to their owners, often with the aid of the memorials and the worldwide Red Cross society network. Moreover, in 2009 the Tracing Service undertook research on the effects whose owners were not yet known by name at the time and was able to assign a large percentage of the effects to specific persons as a result. In 2011, in a further attempt to support the efforts to return the personal belongings still in the ITS’ possession - numbering approximately 3,200 at the time - the names of the owners were published online.
In the autumn of 2015, the effects inventory was one of three sub-collections to be made accessible for viewing and research in the ITS’ first online archive, the Digital Collections Online.
Since that time, interested persons have had the opportunity to view all photos of the effects in conjunction with the owners’ names and, where known, birthdates, and to filter the names by nationality.
Effects in the International Tracing Service Archive and their significance for the following generations
concentration camp.
"It’s good to be able to have, see and touch something"