German cabinet formally approves agreement to open vast Nazi archive

BERLIN - Germany's cabinet formally approved a deal yesterday to open to researchers an archive of millions of Nazi files that describe the mechanics of the Holocaust, and officials said the accord is likely to be signed in late July.

The agreement was reached last month by the 11-nation governing body of the International Tracing Service, the arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross that oversees the archive in the German town of Bad Arolsen.

The protocol will probably be signed July 26 in Berlin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said.

The move to unlock the archive, controlled by 1955 agreements, has come amid pressure from the dying generation of Holocaust survivors and victims' families who feared the histories of their loved ones would be lost forever unless the rules were changed.

The breakthrough came earlier this year when Germany, which had said that access to the files by Holocaust researchers would violate the country's privacy laws, agreed to soften its secrecy rules.

Under current rules, information is given out only to former victims. A third party can access the archives only with the express, written consent of a former victim.

It remains unclear when exactly researchers will be able to access the archives.

Once the agreement is signed, all 11 signatory states have to ratify it.

"How long that will take in each individual case is hard to predict," Jaeger said. He added that Germany was committed to ratifying the deal "as quickly as possible."

The service was founded after World War II to trace missing persons. Later, survivors eligible for compensation applied to the archive for documentary evidence of their mistreatment.
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