The International Committee of the Red Cross will open its vast archive of information about Nazi victims—for the first time. Since World War II. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

The International Tracing Service, which stores information about inmates of Nazi concentration camps, will open its vast archives to researchers by next year, a senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday. The decision to open the files of the Red Cross-run service was made during the committee’s annual meeting, held this week in Jerusalem, after years of debate, ICRC director for international law Francois Bugnion said.

The German-based and funded organization, which was founded in 1943 by the British Red Cross, has information relating to 17 million deportees, including Jews and non-Jews. Along with the Vatican’s sealed archives, it is considered to be the most important World War 2 archive still not open to historians.

The years-old debate over opening the organization’s archives centered around strict European privacy laws, which were pitted against the interest of historical research. “We tried to balance the interests and find an adequate modality to satisfy the historical research while respecting the private sphere of individuals,” Bugnion said. [My BS detector just went to eleven. —ed.]

“Not every individual deported is necessarily 100 percent interested in getting their story out in public,” said German representative Thomas Terstegen, citing forced testimony given under Nazi duress or the deportation of homosexuals as information that individuals may wish to remain private.

But while some European member countries of the 11-nation group — which includes Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States — hesitated opening the files due to strict privacy laws, the US, Britain and Israel lobbied strongly to open the archives to historians, saying this would have been the victims’ strongest wish.

“The only privacy being protected by these laws is that of the criminals,” said Prof. Yehuda Bauer, academic adviser to Yad Vashem, which believes that all archives should be opened to the public.

And when will the Vatican open their sealed records? Why haven’t their archives, and the Red Cross’ archives, been opened to inspection long ago? And why didn’t I even know about this until now?

17 million deportees.

The European organizations who have been withholding this devastating, powerful information for 60 years say they’re concerned about the privacy rights of Holocaust victims. But to this poor, dense, nuance-challenged lizard in California, it looks much more like a 60-year old attempt—a successful 60-year old attempt—to cover their lying asses.

Pardon my French.