I can't imagine it's a particularly pleasant endeavor, but it's necessary.
"Holocaust historians are only now piecing together the scattered research in many languages to understand the vast scope of the camps, prisons and punishment centers that scarred German-ruled Europe, like a pox on the landscape stretching from Greece to Norway and eastward into Russia.
Collecting and analyzing fragmented reports, researchers at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum say they have pinpointed some 20,000 places of detention and persecution — three times more than they estimated just six years ago.
And soon they will know much more.
They are about to have their first access to millions of documents locked away for a half century in the sprawling archive of the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in the central German resort town of Bad Arolsen."
I get a mix of anger & sadness every time I see a documentary about the death camps - any of them really, but the ones set up by the Nazi's are perhaps the most documented. I cannot imagine what'd I'd go through if I had to sort through all the source material & put together a picture of exactly how the camps were organized & ran, so I have some admiration & some sympathy for those who are doing this very important work. You can't leave the office at the end of the day feeling cheery when you do this sort of research can you?
There's an encyclepedie about the camps that is being put together by the united States Holocaust memorial Museum. I won't say that I'll look forward to reading it but it's good that they've done so much digging into this. & I'm sure the fine folks at JPFO will make good use of the info that's being accumulated.
Posted by Publicola at December 30, 2006 04:43 PM | TrackBack