Card index of the “general documents” of the collection Incarceration and Persecution

Both the “generaldocuments” card index as well as the archival materials referenced in it are retro-converted and/or completely digitized. For conservational reasons, however, they can be viewed in digitized form only. The task of the International Tracing Service (ITS) Historical Section, which had existed until 1978, consisted primarily of so-called „document acquisition“, i.e. collecting general records on those groups of persons the ITS is responsible for, thus both for victims of persecution and terror of the Nazi Regime as well as „foreign laborers“ and Displaced Persons. Focus was on the documents concerning persecution and incarceration in the concentration camps. Secondly, the documents should be made accessible both for internal and external users. A card index with four thematic introductions – subject file, filing location file, issuer and provenience file as well as an addressee file – would simplify this. The third task was the evaluation of the materials, among others in order to do the groundwork for the other departments within the ITS. In 1979 the tasks of the Historical Section were passed on to the General Documents Section. In the 1980s the main task focus was on supporting the other ITS departments in their fulfilling of the humanitarian mandate. Supporting historical research was increasingly seen as being outside the scope of the actual mandate of the institution. In April 1982 the tasks of the department were re-evaluated, the work on the file of the "general documents" was discontinued, and the file was then handed over to the General Documents Section, along with explanatory material the General Index working group, among others, had created on the file. In its place the focus was on classification work supporting person-related research. Document acquisition, i.e. specific research on and acquisition of original documents, films or copies of documents from other archives, continued until 2006. The documents acquired during that time are not, however, described in the file. In 2008 the total extent of the documents of the department amounted to 164 linear meters. With the establishment of the Research Department in 2007 the General Documents Section was dissolved. DE ITS 0.1 Central Name Index (reference to ”general doc. folder“) DE ITS 10.7.10 Inventory Index on General Documents For preparing reproductions the ITS regulations for fees applies. Card index of the “general documents”: Descriptions, among others, of the general documents of the Concentration Camp Collection. Their structure follows a multi-level classification on the overall topics Concentration Camp, SS-Construction Brigades, SS-Iron Construction Brigades, Extermination Camps, Youth Protection Camps, Police Detention Camps under the command of the security police, Slave-Labor Camps for Jews, Ghettos and a chronological index. The referenced collection contains, among others: correspondence, decrees and orders from the Reich Main Security Administration and the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, general and statistical commands and orders from individual concentration camps, reports on the conditions in the prison camps and on the fates of witnesses (collected by attorneys general after the war). Digital Copies of the ITS Collections: Documentation and Research Center on the Resistance, Luxembourg; French National Archive, Paris; Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw; State Archives of Belgium; USHMM, Washington; Wiener Library, London; Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.