Collect, write, and remember: historic documentation in the displaced persons camps in Germany

In November 1945, the Belarusian Jewish survivor Israel Kaplan lamented the irretrievable human and cultural losses caused as a result of the wholesale murder of European Jews. Jews lost libraries, archives, museums and important evidence of their history. Together with two Polish Jewish accountants, he founded the Central Historical Commission in Munich on 28 November 1945. The aim was collecting German documents and eyewitness reports from survivors for future historic research regarding the causes and implementation of the Holocaust