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Statement of Rep. Elton Gallegly
Hearing on the Bad Arolsen Holocaust Archives in Germany
March 28, 2007

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

First, I would like to commend you for holding this important hearing and for keeping the attention of Congress focused on the need to provide the victims of the Holocaust and their survivors immediate and complete access to the archives of the International Tracing Service located in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

As one of our witnesses, Mr. Paul Shapiro, who is the Director of the Center of Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, stated in his prepared statement, and I quote: "Who would believe that six decades after the end of World War II an archival repository of 35 to 50 million pages of documentation relating to the fates of 17.5 million people victimized by the Nazis would remain virtually inaccessible to survivors and their families and absolutely closed to scholarly and other research?"

The documents archived by the ITS are important to researchers and scholars who are attempting to examine the genocidal policies and operations of the Nazi regime. However, the archives are most valuable to the actual survivors of the Holocaust, their family members and their descendants who simply want access to the documents to gain specific information and at least some closure as it relates to their own very personal tragedies.

Complete public access to the ITS archives will have one other important consequence. In the past several years, as unbelievable as it sounds, there have been a growing number of people who are publicly denying that the Holocaust even occurred. Just over three months ago, the President of Iran held an international Holocaust denial conference. There is no better antidote to this garbage than the historical record. The ITS documents represent a part of this record. As stated by Mr. Shapiro in his testimony, they are a "vital tool in the struggle against Holocaust denial."

Mr. Chairman, the time for waiting with respect to the Bad Arolsen archives is over. Every day, there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors left among us. The United States should do everything in its power at the upcoming ITS annual meeting to push for the immediate opening of these archives. In the interest of justice and for the sake of those who have already suffered so much in the Holocaust, we should demand nothing less.