Privacy law restrictions in Germany won't hold back releasing Nazi records

Despite it's highly restrictive privacy laws and after decades of holding back, Germany took a major step Tuesday toward opening Nazi records on 17 million Jews, slave laborers and other Holocaust victims to historians and relatives long anxious for conclusive information about their fate, as reported in Guardian Unlimited/a>

Germany pledged to work with the United States to ensure the opening of the archives, which are housed in the German town Bad Arolsen. Eleven nations oversee the 30 million to 50 million documents and are to meet in Luxembourg next month to consider amending a 1955 treaty that has, effectively, limited access and copying.