NAZI FILES DIGITIZED, TRANSFERRED

BBC NEWS:

"The keepers of a vast archive of Nazi documents on the Holocaust have transferred copies of millions of files to museums in Israel and the US.

The electronic transfer is part of an agreement to open up the Bad Arolsen archive, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The files, kept in Germany, were found in concentration camps and other Nazi prisons at the end of World War II.

The ICRC says the archive has now transferred many documents from the archive to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US and to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre in Israel.

The 47 million files stored in the spa town of Bad Arolsen hold meticulously recorded information on forced labourers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners. They take up 26km (16 miles) of shelving.

Historians believe many more details about the Nazis' murder and brutal exploitation of millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and other victims will be revealed.

So far, 12 million documents have been digitised for electronic transfer, the ICRC says.

In grey, bureaucratic language the Nazis kept records on the smallest details - from the number of lice on a prisoner's head to the exact moment of their execution."