20 Most Shocking Discoveries in Nazi Archives About the Persecution of Jews

The Nazi archives contain thousands of documents that reveal how the persecution of Jewish people was organized, expanded, and ultimately transformed into a systematic campaign of mass murder. Orders, reports, correspondence, deportation records, and administrative documents provide direct evidence of how different institutions of Nazi Germany participated in the process. Many of the most disturbing discoveries show the enormous bureaucracy behind the Holocaust. Persecution was not carried out by a single organization or individual. Government ministries, the SS, police forces, railway authorities, local administrations, and other institutions contributed to identifying, isolating, deporting, exploiting, and murdering millions of Jewish people across Nazi-occupied Europe. Some documents also reveal how Nazi officials attempted to conceal what was happening. Euphemisms, coded terminology, destruction of evidence, and secret communications were frequently used when discussing deportations and mass killings. When historians compare these records with survivor testimony, photographs, captured German documents, and other evidence, they provide an extraordinarily detailed picture of how the Holocaust developed. In this documentary, we examine 20 of the most important discoveries found in Nazi archives concerning the persecution of Jews, exploring what these documents reveal about Nazi policies, deportations, ghettos, concentration and extermination camps, and the individuals and organizations responsible for implementing them. Together, these records help preserve the historical evidence of one of the darkest chapters of the Second World War.