A new German online search engine is helping people to discover if their ancestors were members of the Nazi Party.
Christian Rainer, from Austria, told the BBC he found the name of his grandfather within a few seconds using the new tool.
I found out that he became a member of the Nazi Party around 21st of April 1938, just a few days after the Anschluss, when Adolf Hitler annexed Austria to Germany, he detailed.
The online tool allows searching through several million Nazi Party membership cards, known as the NSDAP-Mitgliederkartei.
Rainer, who served as the former editor of the Austrian news magazine profil, remarked that his grandfather applied to become a member just five days after it became legal in Austria.
Developed by Die Zeit, the search tool is backed by archives in Germany and the United States.
Rainer, who never met his grandfather, expressed his surprise at the quick decision to join the party, stating, He was an academic; he should have known in 1938 who the Nazis were.
Rainer noted the importance of the search engine not just for personal revelations but for clarifying the positions of other family members, as he was relieved to find no other family members associated with the party.
Die Zeit reported an overwhelmingly positive response to the search engine, which has been accessed millions of times since its launch in early April. Judith Busch, a spokesperson for Die Zeit, affirmed that users have shared their findings widely.
Approximately 10.2 million people were members of the Nazi Party from 1925 to 1945. The membership cards, which were nearly destroyed during World War II, were saved by Hanns Huber, whose intervention allowed them to play a crucial role in identifying individuals during the de-Nazification phase that followed the war.
For decades, these records were kept by the Americans at the Berlin Document Center before returning to Germany in 1994, and now they can provide vital personal insights regarding a complex historical legacy.
