Projet de loi portant assentiment à l'Accord relatif au Service international de Recherches et à l'Accord de partenariat sur les relations entre les Archives fédérales de la République fédérale d'Allemagne et le Service International de Recherches, signés à Berlin le 9 décembre 2011.
General information ¶
- Submitted by
- MR Swedish coalition
- Submission date
- Feb. 17, 2015
- Official page
- Visit
- Status
- Adopted
- Requirement
- Simple
- Subjects
- archives document retrieval international agreement ratification of an agreement scientific research
Voting ¶
- Voted to adopt
- Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PVDA | PTB VB
Contact form ¶
Do you have a question or request regarding this proposition? Select the most appropriate option for your request and I will get back to you shortly.
Discussion ¶
March 26, 2015 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)
Full source
Rapporteur Georges Dallemagne ⚙
I would like to refer to my written report.
Richard Miller MR ⚙
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, Dear colleagues, the bill that is presented to us today on behalf of the Government is of factual importance to us, namely to enable the best possible functioning of the International Research Service as well as the highest desired efficiency in the relations with the Federal Archives of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In addition to this very specific point, I would like to emphasize two points. The first is the whole problem of plundered goods, goods that were stolen from individuals and families, for the most part of Jewish origin, who were deported, placed in labor camps or transit camps, before being transported to extermination camps, all of which were located in Eastern European countries, where the Jewish population was the most numerous.
All the work of restitution of personal goods, valuables, works of art could, subsequently, be carried out, painfully, over the years. During the examination of the bill in commission, I had asked whether the archives of the International Research Service in Bad Arolsen could contribute to this work of identification and return of property, when such a return was possible. On this question, mr. The Minister answered affirmatively, and I was very pleased.
My second comment, Mr. President, is more related – dear Mr. Cheron, you who are a historian – to the duty of memory. When you look at the information brochure published by the General Archives of the Kingdom and the State Archives in the Provinces, about Bad Arolsen, you learn that the digital archives of the International Research Service actually consist of an immense mass of documents with multiple sources. They have been collected or copied for ⁇ half a century in order to identify and search for the victims of Nazism: missing, deported or displaced people.
The digital copy contains about 80 million images, of which 18 million are for labor camps and concentration camps. Only the files of people’s names contain about 42 million scanned images. Now – and this is what I wanted to emphasize, dear colleagues – the origins of this colossal file date back to 1945. This means, even if the file was subsequently supplemented with search requests, that the vast majority of these documents come from the administration in the broad sense, the Nazi administration itself.
There are the Gestapo prison notes, the lists of persons transported in the convoy, and the names of those who, regardless of age, entered the camps and died there. These documents are, of course, bearers of memory but, given their administrative nature, they add to that memory a dimension that we cannot but try to grasp, assuming that we can understand something to the horror of what happened. This dimension, dear colleagues, is the organised side, the managed side, the thoughtful, rational side of the Shoah. Not only were the crimes committed, but they were recorded, listed, administratively detectable and attributable to a functional authority that was in charge of the search for Jews, the search for Gypsies and other people considered to be Untermenschen. The transport of them, the maintenance, the intendance necessary for extermination, everything can be recovered.
This reality that the archives in question make so tangible is an absolute scandal for reason. Extermination was not accomplished only by barbarians. This was achieved by a highly developed country.
I would like to remind you of Hannah Arendt’s book The Origin of Totalitarianism. His writings add, in my view, an additional dimension to the surprising administrative mobilization that characterizes Nazi politics.
Hannah Arendt writes: "It is not only the non-utilitary character of the camps themselves, the absurdity of punishing completely innocent people, the powerlessness to extortion them for useful work under certain conditions of life, the uselessness of terrorizing a population already completely subdued. It is not this that gives these camps their particular and disturbing quality, but rather their anti-utility function, the fact that even the priority emergencies of military activities could not interfere with these policies. It was as if managing these extermination factories was more important to the Nazis than winning the war.”
The relevant archives, dear colleagues, must be able to tell future generations all that they contain of hidden truths. Therefore, Mr. Minister, the MR group will vote on this historically important text.
I thank you for your attention.