Our services for researchers and academics
We provide comprehensive access to our collection and help you carry out research in our archive.
The Arolsen Archives facilitate research at various levels, so assisting established scholars with their source research is only one of the services we provide. We are equally keen to support school pupils, university students, and amateur researchers. We also provide support for large-scale, international research projects conducted by universities or for historical projects with a regional focus initiated by local remembrance initiatives.
Direct access to primary sources
Because the Arolsen Archives hold the world’s largest collection of documents on victims and survivors of Nazi persecution, we are one of the most important sources to consult when researching Nazi crimes and their consequences. Thanks to the comprehensive digitization of almost the entire collection, researchers can access primary sources directly through our freely accessible online archive. Documents that are not yet fully indexed can be accessed through our local database. Remote access to this local database can be provided on request.
Research support and data analysis
Whether your research focuses on the history of concentration camps, police persecution, the deportation of the Jewish population, forced labor, or the post-war period and displaced persons – we support international teams involved in large-scale research projects. This includes analyzing large datasets using digital methods from the field of Digital Humanities. We employ innovative tools to recognize patterns and connections within the data.
Cooperative projects
The Arolsen Archives are also open to requests for collaboration on large research projects. We are particularly interested in projects that explore new ways to unlock the full potential of our collection. In the past, we have partnered with research groups from universities in Australia, the USA, Israel, France, the Netherlands, and Poland.
Additional sources
In addition to original documents, researchers can also find relevant secondary literature on Nazi crimes and their consequences in our holdings.
Our online library makes copyright-free books and journals from our collection available to you in digital form. The portal includes full-text search functionality as well as useful filter options for fast, precise research. It is expanding all the time and includes a large number of very rare publications that can only be found in a few libraries. Go to the online library.
Our library catalog enables you to find out about the library holdings before you visit Bad Arolsen to conduct your research. This makes it easier for you to prepare for your visit. Even if you are not planning to conduct research on site, the catalog is a valuable tool for a targeted search for literature on the major topics covered by the Arolsen Archives. Access the catalog.
The e-Guide provides explanatory information on various types of documents and provides information on who created them, when, why, how, and for what purpose. It focuses on what are known as “individual documents.” These are index cards and forms that contain data about a single individual.
Go to the e-Guide.
FAQs
All our services are free of charge. In rare cases where fees may apply, this will be clearly indicated and discussed with you in advance. More detailed information is available in our Terms of Use.
For an initial overview of our holdings, go to our website and select “Explore the collection.” For a deeper insight into all the various sub-collections, use the archive tree available in our online archive. The e-guide, an online tool that provides information on the context in which the documents were created, helps explain the content of various types of documents held in our archives. The focus is on index cards that contain data on a single individual. On the basis of five key questions, the e-Guide describes who used the various cards/forms – as well as when, why, how, and for what purpose.
Most of the documents in our collections are available to you without restriction. Please note, however, that there are restrictions on the use and viewing of documents that contain sensitive personal data, such as information about people who were minors at the time, or tracing inquiries (tracing/documentation files) that contain personal details of the person who submitted the inquiry. Access restrictions have been placed on some of these documents.
You can search our extensive online archive for information about specific topics or persons. Our reading room in Bad Arolsen is also open to visitors who wish to conduct research on our premises. Please remember to give us sufficient advance notice of your visit. We can also provide remote access to our database for more extensive research projects. Some of our partner organizations abroad have copies of our digital collections for on-site research. These copies are updated once a year. Please contact the appropriate institution to find out about their opening hours or make an appointment.
Belgium: Archives de l’État en Belgique, Brüssel
France: Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine
Luxembourg: Staatskanzlei – Erinnerungsdienst an die Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs
UK: Wiener Library, London
Israel: Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
USA: USHMM, Washington
Poland: IPN, Warschau
We are constantly working to improve our online archive by adding more and more documents and searchable metadata. That makes it easier than ever for you to carry out a wide range of research online – from all over the world. However, a full search of the entire digitized collection of the Arolsen Archives, including the Central Name Index (CNI), can currently only be carried out in our database. The CNI can help you find documents that have not yet been fully indexed with metadata. This database is accessed through an archiving system that can be used by the staff of the Arolsen Archives and by visitors to our premises.
If you need more information about a specific person or a topic than is available in the online archive, you are welcome to send us an inquiry. To ensure that all inquiries can be answered promptly, we conduct research on a maximum of ten individual people per inquirer per quarter. Depending on the scope of your inquiry and the number of relevant documents in our holdings, we will either make copies of the documents or direct links to the online archive available to you or invite you to visit us in person. In addition to the documents, we also provide large sets of metadata for research purposes on request.
Documents that have been released for use but are not yet available online can be viewed in the reading room. Most of the Arolsen Archives’ holdings have been digitized and can be searched via the database. You can download all the documents that are relevant to your research and either save them on a USB stick or have them sent to you via cloud access after your visit. Please note that you must purchase the USB stick from us during your visit. See our Terms of Use. You will find information about how best to prepare for your visit to the reading room here.
As of October 1, 2019, you no longer need permission to publish a document if the original is part of the collection of the Arolsen Archives. Information about whether a specific document is available as an original is provided in the online archive. You will find this information in the archival description for the document concerned (right half of the screen, above the scanned documents). You may also need to click “Show all meta data.” If the original is not in the Arolsen Archives, please contact the owner of the document (given under “Immediate source of acquisition or transfer”) or the place where the original is stored (given under “Existence and location of originals”). If in doubt, please contact us.