At Nova Southeastern University phone lines were jammed within the first few seconds as hundreds of Holocaust survivors, second-generation members and other interested Jewish persons gathered from coast to coast both in person as well as through the electronic media of email and teleconferencing, to conduct a first-ever 'Town Hall Meeting' in South Florida. Participants pursued such hot-button topics as the secret archives of the Red Cross International Tracing Services (ITS) located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's (USHMM) upcoming plans for the transfer of the ITS 50 million-page collection, corporate involvement during the Holocaust and reparations. Investigative reporter Edwin Black from Washington, D.C. moderated and answered questions.

Many in the audience were astonished to hear opening remarks live by International Tracing Service (ITS) executive director Reto Meister, and archivist Udo Yost calling from Bad Arolsen and welcoming all to come to the ITS archive and access their own documents. The ITS officials confirmed that given a correct spelling of a victim's name and the correct birth date, a search of Bad Arolsen's records could take but a few seconds. They said that the question of putting the Bad Arolsen documents up on the Internet, as advocated by many in the Holocaust community, was not a decision the Red Cross could make.

“This is something that is up to the eleven nations that operate the archive and govern it through a special multilateral treaty,” Meister said.

While Bad Arolsen officials readily answered questions, USHMM officials declined to take calls or answer questions. During videotaped attempts to call USHMM officials, survivor Leo Rechter, a Brooklyn resident, left messages asking why the documents are to be restricted by the museum/memorial.

The Town Hall meeting was co-sponsored by some twenty Holocaust and Jewish communal organizations including the Holocaust Survivors Foundation, National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, Miami Holocaust Survivors of Dade County, Generation After of Greater Washington DC, Second Generation of Los Angeles, and numerous other groups across America, as well as History Network News.

The event was taped for later broadcast by author Edwin Black’s new syndicated Sunday morning TV show, “The Cutting Edge,” scheduled to beam into 32 million households in 54 basic cable markets. Black's syndicated Sunday show is scheduled to launch in the Fall of 2007 season.

Black explained that it was only through the close cooperation of Nova Southeastern University President, Ray Ferraro Jr., that such a town hall-like gathering could take place.

“Because of Nova's tremendous support and the fact it has one of the country’s most advanced teleconferencing and videoconferencing facilities, we were able to give survivors the opportunity to ask their questions and receive immediate responses,” Black said.

One irate Polish survivor from Palm Springs CA sarcastically asked if USHMM officials were not just waiting for survivors to die off so they would not stand in the way of the museum’s further fundraising efforts.

A staff member from the office of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) asked how much longer it might take before the Bad Arolsen files are transferred to the USHMM. The files, mostly slave labor records, would allow survivors to track their relatives through the nightmare network of Nazi concentration camps.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, asked whether Bad Arolsen officials were truly helpful, a question quickly clarified by the forthright statements of both ITS officials and Black's own comments about his most positive experiences at the archive. Indeed, Black contrasted the difficulties he had experienced obtaining information from USHMM officials with the helpfulness he had received from the staff at Bad Arolsen.

Seattle survivor, Fred Taucher, himself a network computer specialist, asked why convoluted digital transfers to 11 nations were required when Bad Arolsen could simply make them available to the world from its own location. Not a few callers wanted to know who engineered the bizarre multilateral treaty language restricting the transfer to a single archive in each nation.

One survivor said,“Until now, the media did not want to hear what we had to say. This type of meeting is a first, so we can speak for ourselves.” During the event, Gary Ratner, western director of the American Jewish Congress, called in to announce an “Integrity Award” for Black in recognition of his investigative series on Bad Arolsen and the disposition of those records.