This tool is intended to aid volunteers all over the world in assisting the ITS in the search for the rightful owners and calling public attention to these special temporary holdings. Thanks to help from volunteers, a number of items were successfully returned as a result of this online publication, initially predominantly in Holland.
On the strength of an initiative launched by Annelies Sijtsma-Hoezen and Erik Dijkstra of Holland after this information went online, more than thirty effects have been turned over to families in Holland. In view of the successful searches, as well as the increasing opportunities offered by the Internet and advancing digitization, the ITS itself started the Returning Effects project in the autumn of 2016. Within this framework, it began systematically researching the persecution histories of the owners of the approximately 3,200 effects in its own archive, and documenting and evaluating the results. The majority of the persecutees proved to be political inmates, primarily from Poland, but also from the former Soviet Union, Germany, Holland, France, and thirty other countries. Effects belonging to Jewish victims of persecution are the exception. The information contained in the documents in the ITS holdings (transport lists, inmate personnel cards, etc.) in turn provide important pointers for where to begin the search for the survivors themselves or for members of their families. Thanks to external investigations and support from various offices all over the world, such as vital statistics and registration offices, and co-operation with memorials, primarily in Poland - among them the Auschwitz and Stutthof Memorials - and international inmates associations, as well as the initiative of dedicated individuals in Poland, Holland, Norway and France, 100 effects were returned to family members such as daughters, sons and grandchildren within a single year.
Digital Collections Online