The Arolsen Archives Database

Background

The Arolsen Archives Database contains more than 1.5 million records shared by the Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Persecution (formerly known as the International Tracing Service) with JewishGen.

These records include both Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, and are an extremely valuable source for genealogists and other researchers. JewishGen is grateful for the Arolsen Archives' cooperation that allows us to make this information even more widely accessible.

As of August 2024, the Arolsen Archives Database includes one dataset, Arolsen Archives Inquires: Red Line Cards. As the name of this dataset suggests, the records relate to inquiries made by people looking for information about relatives or others who were persecuted during the War.

The Arolsen Archives has been receiving such inquiries for more than 70 years, and continues to do so today. The Red Line Cards contain some of the information generated by these inquires: details about the person being searched for (included in the data on JewishGen) and details about the person making the inquiry (for privacy reasons, this is not included in the data on JewishGen).

The two groups of information are separated by a red line on the cards.The information about the person being searched for can include: surname, given name, maiden name, alternate names, birth date, birth place, father's name, mother's name (sometimes with maiden name), nationality (one or more), and religion (often blank).There is also reference information, such as the Arolsen Folder number, Tracing Document number, and Document ID. In your research, you should be sure to record these numbers, since they might be useful in the future.

The Arolsen Archives has used some automated procedures to produce this data from scans of the cards. As a result, the accuracy is not 100%. The Arolsen Archives has also tried to detect potential problems with the accuracy and we have noted any such indications in the QA field in the search results with, "quality assurance needed." Even if you do not see "quality assurance needed," be aware that the record might not be 100% accurate and, if possible, attempt to verify the information with other sources. It is not yet possible to view scans of these cards online, which would help you to verify the accuracy of the data (but note that the original cards might also be inaccurate). If scans become available online, we will make an announcement about this. The Document ID field in the search results should make it possible to find the corresponding scan, if available.

Note that there are often multiple records in this dataset pertaining to the same Tracing Document. We have tried to group them together in the search results, but this is not always possible due to errors. When you find multiple records grouped together, you should always examine them all, since one might contain information not in another, one might have an error that the other does not, etc.

There are about 1.09 million such groups for 1.56 million total records.In the Nationality field in the search results, if a nationality is enclosed in square brackets, like [Polish], this means the nationality has been "inferred" from other information, possibly in other sources. We do not yet have additional details about how this was done or what other sources might have been used.

Searching the Database

This database is currently searchable via the JewishGen Holocaust Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.