For the past 60 years, it has been said that the Germans were maticulous record keepers throughout World war II especially with the Holocaust. Up until now those records have not been found. There have been records but not as much as expected.

Recently in the middle of Germany secret Nazi documents were found after being hiddden for 60 years. It is more than just a stack fo files it is 50 million pages worth of documents. It is a complete archive documenting every aspect of the Holocaust.

Originally the Holocaust was documented by Allied soldiers going through the concentration camps as the Nazis fell in 1945. Right before the Allies invaded Germany in 1945, the documents were taken a town right in the middle fo Germany called Bad Arolsen were they were sorted and organized. They were locaked away in a secret storage facility until recently.

I am not exagerating this. The store rooms 16 miles of files which hold documentation about 17 million victims of the Holocaust. The documents has information about Jews, politcal prisoners, slave laborers, and homosexuals. The storage facility has every document that you can think of. It has Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, arrest warrents including death warrants, documented jewelry confiscated before the prisoners were taken to the camps, and more.

There was a list found of 1000 prinsoners that a factory owner used for labor. Becuase he said that he needed the prisoners for labor he pretty much saved them from the camps. This was the famous Schindler's list. The documents also included Nazi files on Anne Frank.

In general all of the names of the people killed in the gas chambers were not documented, but the people who worked in the camps were documented. Notebooks with the name "Totenbuch" written on them means death book. The notebooks include the cause of death of the prisoners and how many lice for each prisoner and the size of each lice. The execution list shows that they shpt one prinsoner every two minutes at certain camps. This notebook stating the previous informatino was a gift for Hitler.

Why keep all of these records if you were just going to kill someone? It was evidence that they were carrying through with their job.

Some people say that the government just kept the documents secret becuase they wanted to keep the people who had written the documents from being put in danger.

Hmmm.... I can't comment much on this topic.

I guess it was tragic that all of this should happen. We should have avoided WWII. This just makes me sad that many died in that battle.

Innocent lives.

Ugh... such a grim topic. I feel horrible when I think of what all the prisoners went through... They've been traumatized for life. Going through that storage containing the documents must be pretty eerie. :/ Jeez... what insanity has man been up to these past few years...?

You'd be surprised that the Holocaust was not only documented in notebooks but by computers also. There was a business alliance between IBM and the Third Reich. The Nazis used punch card mashines made by the IBM company Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft to plan and organize the genozide as well as use them for documentation, reporting and statistics.

Just like any war there is always a money making issue that comes with it. From an American view that is really bitter: While fighting the Germans it were also American corporations making money by supporting the Wehrmacht. Have a look at General Motors' European brand Opel. Opel had factories in Germany actually manufacturing the military trucks that brought Nazi soldiers to the battlefields. After the war GM took over the fortune Opel made during wartimes. Paradox isn't it?

Wow, all that happened is really sad. But even though its a sad thing I would think that looking through all the documents would be very interesting. Especially seeing documents on those people we have to read about in school like anne frank.

Wow. Really we have to know the mastermind planning behind Hitlers head. Although i do not like him but he was a genius as he was about to win the World War until USA popped into it. I believe Germany lost because of Japan. Japan did not have to involve USA into this. The number of victims were surely more than that which you have stated on there. Some probably were not accounted and we can probably add a million to that number. Many i mean many Jews died because of some crooked sick minded guy with a funny mustache. All ended well with his death anyways.