Lesbian Women at Arolsen Archives
In the last July issue (no. 175) of Archives and Human Rights , the newsletter of the ICA's Section on Archives and Human Rights (ICA-SAHR) , we know about the difficulties of Lesbian women in Austria and Germany during the 1940s and 50s thanks to the documents kept by the Arolsen Archives. The Arolsen Archives are a unique international organization that results as a consequence of the end of World War II. In 1943, the International section of the British Red Cross was asekd by the Headquarters of the Allied Forces to set up a registration and tracing service for missing people. The organization was formalized under the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces and nmaed Central Tracing Bureau (CTB) a year later. Once finished the war, the bureau was moved from London to Versailles, and then to Germany. first in Frankfurt am Main and finally settled in Arolsen (changed its name to Bad Arolsen in 1997), northern Hessen. This beautiful Baroque town was not destroyed because ...