U.S. Holocaust Council Will Get Soviet Records

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council has signed a breakthrough agreement with the Soviet Union that will make available for the first time millions of Nazi documents, photographs and other records of the Holocaust captured by Soviet troops at the end of World War II in Eastern Europe, council officials revealed Wednesday.

The agreement, signed July 29 in Moscow, stipulates that the council will have access to what could be several million documents that can be copied for its planned U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum near the Mall, expected to open in 1991.

“We’re obviously thrilled,” said Miles Lerman, chairman of the Committee of International Relations for the council, who headed a delegation that visited archives in the Soviet Union in July. “We have tried before to get this information, but were always unsuccessful. But the new spirit of glasnost unlocked this important source.”

Could Aid in Nazi Search

The implications of the agreement are extensive and varied for Western scholars, investigators and legal experts, according to officials at the council. Besides adding to the historical documentation, the trove of records, scattered in dozens of archives around the Soviet Union, could aid investigators in tracking down surviving Nazi war criminals.

An identity card from the Soviet archives was the key piece of physical evidence in the case against John Demjanjuk, the former concentration camp guard sentenced to death in Israel in April.

Council officials estimate that 30% to 40% of the material about the Holocaust is in the Soviet Union.

“We saw glimpses of information on everything--about Latvian attitudes toward Jews, about Lithuanian secret police, statistics on the movement of Jews, correspondence of Nazi officers,” said another member of the delegation, Raul Hilberg, professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Vermont. “As far as historical events in the Soviet Union, this is all new material for us.”

Released Specific Records

Until now, the Soviet Union has only released information when it was requested for specific cases, including some records released for Justice Department investigations.

“Some stuff was shown at the Nuremberg trials, but only a tiny, tiny portion,” Hilberg said. “At first, they only showed us that, but then they opened up to show us everything.”

There is no timetable for the project, which is expected to cost close to $2 million to complete and which the council will have to fund privately. Besides copying the documents, the council hopes at some point to be able to borrow original records for exhibits.