Press Releases

April 19, 2007

German President Köhler Signs Legislation Ratifying the Protocols
Opening the Archives of the International Tracing Service for Research

On April 13, 2007, Federal President Horst Köhler signed the legislation on the May 16, 2006, Protocols amending the June 6, 1995, Agreement Constituting an International Commission for the International Tracing Service and the June 6, 1955, Agreement on the Relations between the International Commission for the International Tracing Service and the International Committee of the Red Cross. With its publication in the Federal Law Gazette, the ratification has now become law.

Thus, the national conditions have been created for the protocols to be applicable in Germany. The protocols open the archives of the International Tracing Service for research in contemporary history.

The International Tracing Service is involved in investigating the fate of those lost during the period of National Socialism. It has the world’s most important archive on the Nazi camp system. The Bonn Conventions concluded with the Western Allied Powers in 1955 transferred control of the Tracing Service to the International Committee of the Red Cross and created an International Commission as an oversight body, in which the Federal Republic of Germany is also represented as an equal member.

Apart from administering the documents on concentration and work camps, the Tracing Service’s mandate until now merely entailed searching for missing and displaced persons for those “who had an immediate interest in the information.”

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