"They never found each other," Sack said of her cousin and his mother, her voice breaking. "If these records had been opened earlier, they might have found each other. I could have found those documents 20 years ago, when she was still alive."

Oetiker says the archive is in constant contact with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., as well as Israel's Yad Vashem — both of which hold digitized copies of part of the collection — along with the Polish Institute for National Remembrance.

The Washington museum has drawn up a list of more than 150 German words with English translations to help researchers read the documents: Arbeitslager (slave labor camp) ... deportiert (deported) ... mosaisch (Jewish) ... auf der Flucht erschossen (shot while trying to escape).

Next month, a conference of historians is to meet here to map out the archive's unexplored contents and help determine how best to use the information.

Yet for some, who have struggled to piece together a seamless family picture, even the smallest discoveries can be moving. Tom Weiss of Newton, Mass., found his uncle's name on a yellowing Gestapo list of Jews arrested in France.

"When you see his name on these original lists it has an emotional impact," he said. "It sent chills down my back."

Opening to the public has brought about several key changes — digitization, bright new research rooms, ITS staff eager to share their intimate knowledge of the documents with those seeking and often making a human connection through a find.

Esther Mandelayl, an American who immigrated to Israel two years ago, came to research the fate of Jews from Lublin, Poland. Instead she made an unexpected personal discovery.

Her parents survived the war, but her late father never talked about what happened to him or why he had a long scar down his neck.

But her unusual family name came up on an index card from a displaced persons camp in Italy. It contained detailed information about her father. "It listed every place he had been," she said — from Russia, to Tashkent, to surviving a shot to his neck by the Nazis by falling into a cellar and being left for dead.

She said she could barely believe it: "I have every answer to all my questions about my father's story — the scar, everything."

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On the Net: International Tracing Service: www.its-arolsen.org
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: www.ushmm.org
Yad Vashem: www.yadvashem.org
Institute of National Remembrance: www.ipn.gov.pl/wai/en/10/5
A list of terms used to interpret documents: itsrequest.ushmm.org/its/Glossary.pdf