The first ever documentation of the formidable holdings of the largest
archive on the Holocaust
The Arolsen Holocaust Archive chronicles the history of the Nazi
repository of voluminous prisoner records from World War II, capturing
in excruciating exactitude the Nazi campaign to murder millions and
eradicate European Jewry. Located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and under the
auspices of the International Red Cross, the International Tracing
Service (ITS) was renamed the Arolsen Archives - International Center on
Nazi Prosecution in 2019 and is one of the largest Holocaust archives in
the world. The repository holds 17.5 million name cards, over 50 million
documents and more than 16 miles of records and artifacts--all of which
were out of reach for both survivors and scholars from its founding in
1943 until the ITS's opening to the public in 2007.
New York-based photographer Richard Ehrlich (born 1938) is the first to
record the interiors of the archives through photography, and thus to
preserve the unspeakable atrocities it contains; his project forms part
of permanent collections including the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, DC, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Jewish Museum
in Berlin. Notable images include documentation of Schindler's List
and Anne Frank's transport papers to Bergen-Belsen, as well as minute
details of prisoner exploitation.
