The Nazi War Criminals Records Interagency Working Group, created by presidential executive order 13110 in January 1999, is soliciting assistance in locating information about classified federal records relating to Nazi war criminals, Nazi war crimes, persecution, and looted assets. Anyone with information may contact the group.
The group was created to coordinate the implementation of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, which required the U.S. government to locate, inventory, recommend for declassification, and make available to the public records relating to Nazi ar crimes and looted assets. The group is composed of seven agency representatives and three members of the public appointed by the president. The group is chaired by Michael J. Kurtz of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
In 1999 the group initiated a large-scale effort to identify records and to begin the process of declassifying and transferring pertinent records to NARA. Agencies were directed to identify records likely to contain relevant information and to go through those records to specifically identify relevant files. More than 300,000 pages have been declassified so far, out of approximately 100 million pages currently under review.
The group has held meetings with historians, Holocaust scholars, and the general public. A group web site (http://www.nara.gov/iwg) has also been set up to provide information about the activities of the group.
The group can be reached at Interagency Working Group Staff, National Archives, Rm. 2600, 8601 Adelphi Rd., College Park, MD 20740-6001. E-mail: iwg@arch2.nara.gov.