Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust

Author: Dan Stone Stone tells the story of the last great unknown archive of Nazism, the International Tracing Service (ITS). Set up by the Allies at the end of World War II, the ITS has worked to find missing persons and aid survivors with restitution claims or reunite them with loved ones. From retracing the steps of the “death marches,” with the aim of discovering the burial sites of those murdered across the towns and villages of Central Europe, to knocking on doors of German foster homes to find the children of forced laborers, Fate Unknown uncovers the history of this remarkable archive and its more than 30 million documents. Under the leadership of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the tracing service became one of the most secretive of postwar institutions, unknown even to historians of the period. Delving deeply into the archival material, Stone examines the little-known subcamps and, after the war, survivors' experience of displaced persons camps, bringing to life