A new German online search engine is helping people to discover if their ancestors were members of the Nazi Party.
Christian Rainer, from Austria, told the BBC he found the name of his grandfather within a few seconds. I found out that he became a member of the Nazi Party around 21st of April 1938, just a few days after the Anschluss, when Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to Germany, he said.
The online tool allows people to search through several million Nazi Party membership cards, the NSDAP-Mitgliederkartei.
Rainer stated that his grandfather applied to become a member of the NSDAP (Nazi) Party, just five days after it became legal in Austria. The search tool was set up by the German newspaper Die Zeit, in cooperation with archives in Germany and the United States. Rainer never met his grandfather, who died shortly before he was born in 1961.
I always knew that he was close to the Nazis, but I was surprised that it only took him five days to join them, he said. He was an academic. He should have known in 1938 who the Nazis were.
The search engine was important, Rainer said, not only for what it told him about his grandfather, but because it also helped clear other members of his family, including his father.
I was happy I didn't find anyone else from my family, especially not my father. I had never suspected him of being a Nazi. He was drafted into (the Wehrmacht) in 1941 and wounded few times, he said.
Die Zeit reported that the response to the search engine has been overwhelming. Since its launch at the beginning of April, it has been accessed millions of times and shared thousands of times, according to Judith Busch, spokesperson for Die Zeit.
One user commented on Die Zeit's website that they found two close relatives who were involved, stating, To have my perspective changed at the age of 71 is a bitter shock. Approximately 10.2 million Germans became members of the party between 1925 and 1945.
The membership cards were almost destroyed during the last days of World War II, but they were saved by Hanns Huber, the director of a nearby paper mill, who later handed them over to the Americans. The cards were crucial for the identification of individuals in the de-Nazification process after the war.
For decades, the cards remained with the Americans at the Berlin Document Center, later transferred to the German Federal Archives in 1994, with microfilm copies sent to the US National Archives. Until recently, inquiries could only be made by formal request, but now the US Archives have begun making their records available online.
Die Zeit stated that it obtained the data and backed up the documents to make them easily searchable, marking a significant movement towards uncovering historical truths. Christian Rainer emphasized the tool's relevance for individuals today, highlighting the ongoing impact of history on current generations. Eight decades on, after the end of the World War, you can still find out truth that you haven't known before, he stated.
