The National Archives demand that researchers anonymize personal data contained in the file of a former Gestapo leader.
This year, a researcher working under an agreement between the Luxembourg state and the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) on the financial spoliation of Jews during World War II submitted a special access request to the National Archives (AnLux) for the file of Josef Ackermann. From 1940, Ackermann was responsible within the Gestapo in Luxembourg for “Abteilung IV a,” which managed Jewish and other confiscated property (Verwaltung des jüdischen und sonstigen Vermögens). The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure explicitly refers to the trial of this German war criminal and the documents preserved at AnLux as essential for studying this key figure in the persecution of Jews in Luxembourg.
These archives have been used in Luxembourg historiography since at least the 1980s. For his book Longtemps j’aurai mémoire in 1974, Paul Cerf appears to have accessed the trial documents. Paul Dostert explicitly cited them in his Luxemburg zwischen Selbstbehauptung und nationaler Selbstaufgabe, published in 1985. Since then, this trial has been regularly referenced, including in the recent dissertation by Blandine Landau, Pillages et ‘aryanisation’ au Luxembourg pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
It was, therefore, surprising when this researcher was imposed the following conditions by AnLux: “The anonymization of personal data, both during its use and in the citation of archive files, which must be done as follows: AnLux, reference number.” The National Archives, whose director is a member of the C²DH advisory board, are part of a broader agreement between the Luxembourg state and the Jewish community to address unresolved questions related to the spoliation of Jewish property during the Holocaust. In January 2021, the archives received a specific budget to facilitate “access to National Archives files related to World War II and the Holocaust.”
In the Ackermann file, AnLux once again exceeds the terms set by the transferring entity, in this case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which granted access “on the condition that the consultation and use of personal data are limited to the research purpose and do not excessively infringe on the privacy of the individuals concerned.” These conditions make no mention of anonymization. As in a previous incident where AnLux imposed anonymization prior to consultation, the institution is further tightening access conditions.
Contrary to recent claims in an article in the Lëtzebuerger Land, AnLux does not simply “observe the law”1 but interprets it in a way highly unfavorable to research. The invocation of privacy rights seems particularly questionable. This right is strictly personal and ceases to apply after a person’s death, as recently ruled by the Luxembourg District Court. In a case opposing Simone Retter, daughter of architect Paul Retter, to journalist Bernard Thomas, the judges ruled that the right to privacy “belongs only to the living.”2
Luxembourg’s archiving law, which governs the accessibility of archives, is more restrictive, requiring a special access request if a person has not been deceased for more than 25 years. However, given that Ackermann has been dead for 27 years and considering his profile, the argument of a “risk of excessive infringement on privacy” seems, at the very least, incomprehensible.
Prohibiting the naming of one of the architects of Jewish spoliation in Luxembourg leads to a disembodied historical narrative, stripping it of its meaning.
This post has first been published as an opinion piece in French in d’Lëtzebuerger Land (6 December 2024)