Article #243076

Exclusive: Research uncovers programme to make centuries-old records legible to detect people’s ancestry

Large numbers of paper restorers and bookbinders were recruited by the Nazis and “contributed directly to genocide” during the second world war, according to research.

A British historian has uncovered a Europe-wide programme in the 1930s and 1940s in which restorers repaired and cleaned historic church and civil records, making them legible so that the Nazis could detect anyone with Jewish ancestry.