Dutch families receive effects of relatives who were Nazi victims

Dutch families whose relatives were put to death during the Nazi occupation reclaimed the victims' personal effects from Red Cross archives on Monday, Jan. 15.

The personal effects have been locked up in Red Cross archives in Bad Arolsen, in central Germany, for decades.

Viewing the items evokes ghosts from the past, said Gerrit Jan Evers, who learned just a few weeks ago that the effects had been discovered.

"So many died. And now, 63 years later, I'm here holding my father's identity card in my hand," Evers told DPA news agency.

The Red Cross' own International Tracing Service supervises the archive of captured files on some 17.5 million non-Germans persecuted by the Nazis or displaced during World War II.