A Nazi archive of more than 47 million files is being preserved in digital format and gradually made available to museums in Israel and the USA.  The files currently take up 26km of shelving.

The 47 million files hold meticulously recorded information on forced labourers, concentration camp victims and political prisoners. They form part of the Bad Arolsen archive, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). They were found in concentration camps and other Nazi prisons at the end of World War II.

So far, 12 million files have been digitally preserved and made ready for electronic transfer.  The ICRC says the archive has now transferred many documents from the archive to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the US and to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Centre in Israel.

The archive is controlled by an 11-nation treaty signed in 1955 and amended by the 2006 protocol. The countries are: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and the US. The archive will only be fully opened to the public when the 2006 protocol is ratified by Italy, France and Greece. That is expected later this year.

It is believed that many more details about the Nazis' murder and brutal exploitation of millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and other victims will be revealed once the full archive is digitally preserved and made accesible to the public. The archive has been used in the past to help people trace their relatives, but access has been restricted to protect victims' privacy.