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Bad Arolsen (dpa) - A good 75 years after the end of the Second World War, many people are still looking for information about the fate of their relatives.
In 2020, the Arolsen Archives received inquiries about around 26,000 people who were persecuted, abducted or murdered during the Nazi era, as the International Center on Nazi Persecution in Bad Arolsen announced on Thursday.
The number has increased by around ten percent compared to the previous year.
Around three quarters of the inquiries came from relatives, only around one percent from survivors.
The number of survivors or witnesses is getting smaller every year, said Floriane Azoulay, director of the Arolsen Archives.
"All the more important are the documents, which to a certain extent speak to younger generations in their place and are often the last trace of the victims."
The Arolsen Archives were able to provide answers and copies of documents to around 60 percent of the inquiries.
In total, the inquiries came from around 70 countries.
Most of those interested came from Germany, France, the states of the former Soviet Union, the USA and Poland.
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Under the name “#StolenMemory” (German: stolen memory), the archives are also looking for survivors in order to return personal belongings of those imprisoned in the concentration camp.
In February, for example, a Frenchman was sent his father's wristwatch and fountain pen - according to the Archives, the 500th return of personal items since the project began.
Around 900,000 people also used the online archive for their research.
Since 2019, the Arolsen Archives, a UNESCO World Document Heritage Site, have published around 27 million documents from their collection online.
It provides information about concentration camp inmates, forced laborers and survivors of the persecution.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210211-99-396192 / 2
Arolsen Archives project page