[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Red Cross International Tracing Service

[Howard Krushel]

George and Barb:
I believe there is one main site which has all the information; that is the
Red Cross International Tracing Service(ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany; They
have a huge collection of data. ITS maintains a Central Name Index of 50
million individual entries(index cards) representing at least 17.5 million
different individuals. This index indicates what may be available in
specific documents, known as tracing documents (T/D). Closed to public
access since its inception in Jan. 1946 until the fall of 2007, the ITS
governing council of representatives from 11 countries amended its charter
in 2006 "to ensure access, for research purposes".
ITS digitized its Master Index and these have been made available at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. 
However the Tracing Documents(T/D) will not be digitized until the end of
2010 or the beginning of 2011.
To begin a search one would need to travel to Washington or Bad Arolsen, or
hire a researcher or write to ITS at email at its-arolsen.org  . General
questions, on a very common name found over a wide area, would likely take
up to much time for their staff.

Further information can be obtained at www.its-arolsen.org . If a search of
the Central Name Index reveals that ITS holds files of interest, the next
step is to acquire the files. T/D files are not scheduled to be digitized
until later. So, at this time, the only place to see these files is at ITS
in Bad Arolsen.

There are 2.5 million T/D. They are correspondence files created when
someone wrote to ITS after the war asking for information about one or more
relatives. For every letter of inquiry, ITS created a file card with the
name of the inquirer and opened a case file. Into the case file went the
original letter of inquiry, any future correspondence, and all ITS documents
that applied to the person being sought.

Two other Red Cross offices may to be of interest, especially the one
located in Munich (www.drk-suchdienst.org  ); This office has recently
signed an agreement with the Archive in Kiev in order to check on the
whereabouts of about 20,000 people who disappeared.

The second office is located in Hamburg (www.drk.de/suchdienst).

Apparently Bad Arolsen has more information on the area of post-war Germany
occupied by England, France and the U.S. then it has of the area that was
occupied by Russia.

Howard Krushel


    
-----Original Message-----
From: ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org
[mailto:ger-poland-volhynia-bounces at eclipse.sggee.org] On Behalf Of George
Shoning
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:24 PM
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org; byantha at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Village name


Barb,

 

You wrote:

 

> The individuals that fled would've registered along the way with the 

> Red Cross? And families were reunited following the war through the 

> Red Cross? How did they do that?  How did they know where to go 

> to register? Where could I find the information they registered?

 

 

My mother and relatives went through this process; I was just about eleven.
The Red Cross was very active in reuniting families.  Much of the
information about the process was by word-of-mouth among displaced persons.
Anyone who wanted to find a relative filed an application with the Red Cross
in Germany.  The Red Cross matched applications and notified the applicants
of the addresses of the sought person or persons.  Needless to say, this was
all done manually (no computers) and in some cases took rather long.  My
mother was able to locate her mother, brother, and sister-in-law through
this process.

 

I do not know if or where the applications submitted to the Red Cross were
saved.

 

George Shoning
 		 	   		  

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