History

The archive’s collection consists of over 4,400 testimonies that record the experiences of over 4,000 survivors, witnesses, bystanders and liberators of the Holocaust.
Registration with the Aviary platform is required to view testimonies. Please follow steps 1-4 on the "Search the Archive" page to register for access.

Human Rights Studies Online is a research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects.

It was within the context of evidence collection that the War Crimes Branch received copies of documents known as "SAFEHAVEN Reports." SAFEHAVEN was the code name of a project of the Foreign Economic Administration, in cooperation with the State Department and the military services, to block the flow of German capital across neutral boundaries and to identify and observe all German overseas investments. In order to coordinate research and intelligence-sharing regarding SAFEHAVEN-related topics, the War Crimes Branch received SAFEHAVEN reports from various agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as SAFEHAVEN-related military attach reports, regarding the clandestine transfer of German assets outside of Germany that could be used to rebuild the German war machine or the Nazi party after the war, as well as art looting and other acts that elicited the interest of Allied intelligence agencies during the war. Another aspect of the SAFEHAVEN project was the restoration of looted art treasures to their rightful owners.