Haaretz
Tevet 9, 5767
The incoming head of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other United States lawmakers are
pressing governments to speed up ratification of an agreement that will
open up access to millions of documents from the Nazi era in
Germany.
Earlier this month, Senator Joseph Biden, who takes over
as head of the committee when Congress reconvenes on January 4, urged
Britain to move quickly on ratification so that the public can view the
vast war-era archive.
"Further delay in release of this archive
material would be unjust to Holocaust survivors - virtually all of whom
are now elderly - still seeking compensation for the unspeakable crimes of
the Nazi regime," Biden wrote December 15 to British Ambassador Sir David
Manning. "We owe it to them as well as their relatives to act
promptly."
Biden, a Democrat, also said that the archival material
stored in the west German town of Bad Arolsen would provide "further
proof, if any were still needed that those who deny the occurrence of the
Holocaust are dangerously deluded."
Iran drew worldwide
condemnation for hosting 67 participants from 30 countries at a conference
earlier this month debating whether the World War II genocide of 6 million
Jews took place.
In the House, Representative Alcee Hastings, a
Democrat, said he was deeply concerned about "the consistent delay of the
commission members" of the International Tracing Service to permit
Holocaust survivors access to the documents.
"This ongoing delay is
a further example of how the Holocaust survivors, who have been part of
such unimaginable, horrendous genocide and the greatest crime against
humanity are forced to endure severe obstacles and difficulties," he said
in a statement Wednesday.
"In the Holocaust's aftermath, there have
been far too many demonstrations of survivors and heirs of Holocaust
victims who have been refused their moral and legal right to information,
restitution of assets, or compensation for slave labor."
Last April
the 11-nation governing body of the International Red Cross' International
Tracing Service, which administers the archive, agreed to expand access,
overcoming the German privacy concerns that had kept it closed for 50
years.
The signatories to the agreement are Germany, the United
States, Israel, Britain, France, Luxembourg, Greece, Italy, Belgium,
Poland and the Netherlands. Now a ratification process is under way in
most of those countries.