Internet resources: France to digitize police archives during Nazi occupation

The prefecture of Paris police is going to make World War II archives available online. This work will be launched within several weeks.

Until now these documents – reports of the Directorate of General Information and special gendarme brigades, reports of custodies, spying and interrogatories – were housed at the Paris Police Museum (La Préfecture de Police museum). They were available only to historians.

Now due to digitization, holdings of the prefecture will become accessible for the general public. However this will happen not earlier than in 2015-2016, announces the police prefecture archives service. Under the current legislation, archival documents related to legal cases, may become public just after 75 years.

Another undeniable benefit of digitization is the increase of storage life of the documents, considering the fact that paper used during World War II was not of a high quality.