The Arolsen Archives, formerly known as the International Tracing Service, have added a “milestone” 13 million documents to their online database of documents and information on the victims of Nazi persecution. 

This follows the upload of 13 million documents with the launch of the online database in May 2019. 

It will now be possible to access and search all 26 million of the Arolsen Archives’ documents online. They contain information on 21 million names of those displaced, persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime.  

“The Arolsen Archives have recently expanded the collections on the internet to include documents on forced laborers and on deportations to concentration camps,” the Archives said in a statement earlier this week. 

The latest uploads included data about the deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from the former German Empire, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, and the card index of forced labourers. 

“This means that the majority of the documents in the world’s most comprehensive archive on Nazi persecution are now accessible online,” the Archives said.

“They are a unique body of evidence that documents the crimes committed by the Nazis, and they are of immeasurable value to the relatives of the victims of Nazi persecution.”  

The archive, which is based in the north German town of Bad Arolsen, said that the project was facilitated by its Israeli partner Yad Vashem. 

Almost all the documents that relate to Nazi persecution are now publicly available online, it said.

“They are a unique body of evidence that documents the crimes committed by the Nazis, and they are of immeasurable value to the relatives of the victims of Nazi persecution,” the Archives said. 

The International Tracing Service was established by the Western Allies in 1944, and in 2019 changed its name to the Arolsen Archives – International Centre on Nazi Persecution.