Dear Beth,
In response to your email this morning....
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Bad Arolsen files that were just recently made accessible to the general public.
As I understand it, the Bad Arolson files are a couple of million pages of records, produced by the Nazis, that pertain to the prisoners of various concentration camps (including Buchenwald). These records remained sealed for 60 years and were not accessible to the general public until just a couple of years ago.
Once they finally became accessible, the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. digitized all of the documents and set up a system where:
(i) inquiries can now be made about a specific person;
(ii) the Museum's staff will research that person; and,
(iii)the Museum will then provide any information that they're unable to uncover.
A few months ago, I submitted a request for information about Dad's younger brother Abraham (even though we had already learned of Abraham's fate from the Red Cross in 1998, about a year and a half after Dad died).
At that time (in 1998), you might recall hearing that Audra had received a letter from the American Red Cross, advising us they had discovered a grave of Abraham in a city cemetery in Blankenhain, Germany. That's when I took a trip over there with my (now late) friend Neil Dolinsky; visited the gravesite; and learned more details about Abraham's fate, including the fact that he had been liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, and taken (along with a few others who were barely clinging to life) to a nearby hospital in the town of Blankenhain, Germany where he died a few weeks later (on May 22, 1945) at age 19.
Again, I acquired this information in 1998 shortly after Dad died. Nonetheless, a few years later when the Bad Arolsen files were finally opened to the public, I wanted to submit a request to the Musuem just to see if there was any additional information I could obtain. And I chose Abraham to be the subject of this (my) first request for information.
A few days ago, I received from the Museum, a response to my request (see attachments hereto and cover letter below).
Hershel J. Shapiro P.O. Box 1942 Denver, CO 80201 (303)382-4144 [off] (720)280-366 [cell] hjslaw@hotmail.com
