Hitler's secret archives contained roughly 50 million documents that now fill more than 16 miles of shelves, documenting some aspects of Nazi victimization for some 17 million people — one quarter of them Holocaust victims. Shapiro said people who learn of the detail contained in the records — like Schwartz's record of an infirmary stay for a throat infection — are always surprised, since Hitler's goal was to exterminate the Jews. Why keep such detailed records?

"They wanted to show they were getting the job done, and to record how well that was being done was very important," Shapiro said.

The ITS was established by Allied forces following the war in an effort to help reconnect concentration camp survivors and other displaced people with family members. Held under the auspices of the International Red Cross, the archive has continued to grow over time as records from all over Europe have been sent there to be catalogued and stored.

But as time passed and bureaucrats became more concerned about privacy and what may be found in the documents, personnel charged with keeping the collection at Bad Arolsen, Germany, had a backlog of more than 400,000 unfilled requests for information, Shapiro said.

At first, his efforts at diplomacy were quiet, as he sought to explain the urgency of allowing access to Holocaust survivors whose chances of dying before they were able to get any information about their family members continued to escalate. But repeated delays and formidable international obstacles convinced him that "going public" was the only way to make substantial headway.

Despite hate mail and increasing agitation among some over his tenacity, Shapiro talked publicly about the re-victimization of Holocaust survivors by those who continued to throw roadblocks in the way of public access to the records.

This week, he has spent time explaining to hundreds of Jewish genealogists how the ITS archive will allow them get information from never-before-accessible documents that may solve the mysteries some have been seeking to uncover for more than half a century.

For more information on ITS records coming to the Holocaust Museum, see www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/its/faq/ or call the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors at 202-488-6130.

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com