London library makes World War II war crimes searches easier

“This is a whole hardware store of nails to hammer into the coffin of Holocaust denial,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London. “It’s the first time it is practically accessible to the general public as the commission initially intended.”

Plesch and other researchers campaigned for the U.N. to open access to the files, which he used to write the book “Human Rights After Hitler.” In 2014, the U.S. Holocaust Museum made the archive freely available at its reading room in Washington. Prior to that, the records had been largely locked away at the United Nations, which granted only limited access.

“Nobody has paid any attention to it,” said Ben Barkow, director of the Wiener Library. “It has been hidden in plain sight.”

The documents detail Allied efforts to prosecute thousands of alleged Nazi and Japanese war criminals, from heads of state like Adolf Hitler to guards at the Auschwitz and Treblinka concentration camps.

The archive includes evidence gathered by local people who documented crimes long before the war ended and smuggled to Allied leaders in London.

“These people were meeting under aerial bombardment, dealing with affidavits smuggled out” of occupied countries, Plesch said. “Resistance movements were paying attention to the legal prosecution of oppressors.”

Danica Kirka, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

London library makes World War II war crimes searches easier

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