International Tracing Service documents at Arolsen be opened?

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

THIS IS A MOST SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT! 

If ever you needed a sample of media disinformation, the New York 
article below is blatant, in-your-face chutzpah disinformation!

I am sure that some of our more scholarly oriented revisionists will 
have a thing or two to say about this piece of "news" - I will merely 
give you a taste for what this is really all about from what I 
gathered in conversation with Ernst.

When I first met Ernst and started to learn about the vast deception 
called the "Holocaust", I asked him:  "If you had only one wish to be 
fulfilled to clean up this mess, what would that be?"  and his reply 
was:  "To have the records of Arolsen be open to the public.  We 
could settle this matter once and for all.  With computer data bases, 
it could be done in a few weeks!"

As I heard later it from others, it is Revisionists who want the 
Arolsen documents be made available.  It is the Holocaust Lobby that 
has blocked access since 1979 - the year the Holocaust-debunking 
Institute for Historical Review was founded!

Why are they clamouring NOW to have them be opened?  So they can get 
their hands on the vital statistics of what really did and did not 
happen - and maybe start a little accidental fire? 

My guess is that either Ernst or Germar Rudolf pushed to have those 
archives be opened!

By the way, Biedermann testified in Ernst's 1988 Holocaust Trial in 
Toronto, an excerpt of which is on the Zundelsite, 
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd10biedermann.html

Read what that lying rag, the New York Times, has to say:

[START]

U.S. - German Flare-Up Over Vast Nazi Camp Archives  

   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/international/europe/20germany.html

  Tempers are flaring over a United  States demand to open to scholars 
and researchers  a huge repository of information about the 
Holocaust contained in the files of the  International Tracing 
Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany. 

  Based in part on documents gathered by Allied  forces as they 
liberated Nazi concentration camps, the stock of files held by the 
organization stretches for about 15.5 miles, and  holds information 
on 17.5 million people. It  amounts to one of the largest closed 
archives anywhere.

  The collection is unique in its intimate personal  detailing of a 
catastrophe, which is what makes the question of open access so 
delicate. The  papers may reveal who was treated for lice at which 
camp, what ghoulish medical experiment was  conducted on which 
prisoner and why, who was  accused by the Nazis of homosexuality or 
murder  or incest or pedophilia, which Jews collaborated  and how 
they were induced to do so.

  Since the end of World War II the Tracing  Service, operating as an 
arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, has used the 
files to  help people trace the fates of relatives who disappeared 
into the murderous vortex of Nazi  terror. Now, more than 60 years 
after the end of the war, the United States says that task is 
largely done and it is time to open up the archive, copy it so that 
it can also be stored in  other countries and make it available to 
historians.

  "The U.S. government favors opening up all  records on the 
Holocaust," said Edward O'Donnell, the special envoy for Holocaust 
issues at the  State Department. "Our objective is to open the 
archive, and we will continue to push."

  But that push has met a wall of legal and  procedural objections - 
from Charles Biedermann, the Red Cross official who has been director 
of  the Tracing Service for two decades, and from the  German and 
Italian governments. The atmosphere  within the 11-nation 
international commission  that oversees the operation has become 
poisonous.  At meetings to discuss the opening of the  archive, 
German officials have asked whether it  is really in anyone's 
interest to have  accusations about particular Jews being murderers 
or homosexuals made public. Because German  privacy laws are much 
stricter than those in the United States, German authorities are 
concerned  that an opening could lead to lawsuits charging that 
personal information was handed out illegally.

  Wide access to the papers could also provoke new claims for compensation.

  "This is a scandal and a big scar on the image of  Germany," said 
Sara Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial 
Museum in  Washington, which has been eager to secure copies of the 
files.

  Paul Shapiro, the director of advanced Holocaust  studies at the 
museum, accused Germany of "abusing efforts to achieve consensus" and 
"exerting a stranglehold on the process." He  added, "Hiding this 
record is a form of Holocaust denial."

  Such strong words are at odds with the generally  positive tenor of 
German-American relations on Holocaust matters, even through 
negotiations as  elaborate as those that led to Germany's agreement 
in 2000 to compensate former slave laborers of the Nazis.

  Germany is outraged at the suggestion that it may  be dragging its 
feet. "I object to the assertion that we have something to hide or 
are not  forthcoming," said Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador 
to the United States. "That insinuation is false."

  The clash has some of its roots in the complex  history and 
labyrinthine legal structure of the Tracing Service. Set up late in 
the war, it has  long been administered under the terms of the 1955 
Bonn Agreements, which restored German sovereignty.

  That treaty says the facility must "take all  reasonable steps to 
avoid divulging information about a person or persons which might 
prejudice  the interests of the person or persons concerned or of 
their relatives."

  In essence, it confines access to information to  the persecuted 
themselves, their relatives or legal representatives. But the accord 
also says  all of the governments in the 11-nation governing 
commission have the right to inspect documents.  Those countries are 
the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the 
Netherlands,  Greece, Israel, Poland and Luxembourg.

  Germany and Mr. Biedermann say that for the  archives to be opened, 
the treaty must be amended. That requires a unanimous vote and 
subsequent approval of national legislatures. The process would take 
years even if an elusive unanimity could be secured.

  "As director, I must fulfill my orders," Mr.  Biedermann said. "My 
superior is the I.C.R.C., my ruling body the 11 governments. If they 
decide  the records can be opened and copies given to other 
countries, and if the issue of legal  liabilities is addressed, of 
course I will comply. But right now there is no mandate for 
historical research."

  Last month, the director posted a statement, now  withdrawn, on the 
Tracing Service's Web site, saying that handing over copies of the 
files to  others was "neither morally nor legally justifiable at 
present."

  The United States, while ready to work for an  amendment of the Bonn 
Agreements, is impatient. It argues that it never ceded ownership 
rights of  the papers at Bad Arolsen, that all 11 governments have 
the right to inspect them and  that no absolute legal impediment 
exists to the immediate copying and transfer of the files.

  But the German government, having already paid  out more than $80 
billion in reparations, is concerned that questions of legal 
liability be  thoroughly clarified before Bad Arolsen is opened up 
and its files made available elsewhere.

  "We have to address the question of who will be  allowed to do what 
with this data and who will be  legally responsible if somebody 
abuses this," Mr.  Ischinger said. "There are layers of legal 
difficulties."

  The legal issues are indeed complex. But six  decades after the war, 
it seems clear that opening up Bad Arolsen would play a critical role 
in filling in the details of the vile tapestry of Nazi crimes. "We 
need to connect all the dots," Ms. Bloomfield said.

  Besides, the Tracing Service is swamped. Its  budget, provided by 
Germany, has been cut as part  of national austerity measures. Its 
staff has  been reduced to about 360 from more than 400. Its  backlog 
of unanswered tracing inquiries exceeds  400,000, partly because of a 
wave of questions on  slave-labor compensation that had to be 
answered.  People demanding to know what happened to their  relatives 
sometimes go years without a response.

  Its process of making digitized copies of papers  has been painfully 
slow; only 55 percent of documents have been copied electronically. 
This  copying, a necessary prelude to any transfer of information, 
will take two more years, Mr.  Biedermann says. That appears to be 
more time  than the United States is prepared to wait. Last June, at 
a meeting in Warsaw of the 20-country  Task Force for International 
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, a 
statement was issued calling for "immediate steps  to be taken to 
open the archive" at Bad Arolsen  "to scholars and other 
researchers." It said the  11-nation international commission should 
"address this matter on an urgent basis."

  But no urgency has been apparent, despite the  fact that all 11 
countries in the commission overseeing Bad Arolsen are members of the 
20-nation Task Force. A meeting of lawyers from the commission is 
scheduled for later this month  in Luxembourg. It will be followed by 
a gathering  in May of leading officials, including Mr.  O'Donnell, 
who made clear he would like to see a  resolution of the dispute 
then.  

[END]
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