(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will be joined by Holocaust survivors and a number of local Jewish organizations, for an event in October aimed at helping the local Jewish community begin the search for newly available information on family members that is now public due to the opening of the largest closed Holocaust-era archives, the International Tracing Service (ITS). 

The event is scheduled to take place the morning of October 5, 2008 at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital at the Douglas Garden.

Archives at Bad Arolsen, Germany have been the world’s largest closed-Holocaust-era collection of documents, containing millions of records about the fates of over 17 million victims who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

The archives became open to the public in November 2007 when countries of its governing body ratified the agreement that allowed the collection to become open and for these documents to be transferred to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem in Israel.

Ros-Lehtinen, along with her Florida colleague, Representative Robert Wexler, introduced the Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act.  This bill seeks to bring justice to survivors by addressing the problem of settling unpaid Holocaust-era insurance claims. She, along with a number of other Members of Congress, pressed the relevant European countries to ratify the agreement necessary to open the archive.

“Open access to these documents will provide many Holocaust survivors and their families with critical information about their loved ones, as well as supply researchers and educators with the materials necessary to enhance the public knowledge about Holocaust,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

“I am proud to be a part of the October 5^th community briefing and play a role in ensuring the world never forgets about this grim episode in recent human history,” added Ros-Lehtinen.

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