March 7, 2000

Holocaust Archive Inaugurated

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The world's largest archive of material documenting the murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi regime was inaugurated Tuesday by Israel's Holocaust memorial authority.

The building contains more than 55 million documents in 40 languages, 130,000 photographs, and thousands of videocassettes and films.

The material includes personal testimonies of survivors, Nazi documents, records of war crimes trials, diaries and memoirs.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in a dedication, wrote that Israel has a "sacred mission" to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem's Holocaust museum and its other exhibits were visited last year by more than two million visitors, about 80 percent of them from abroad, officials said.

Pope John Paul II is due to speak at Yad Vashem on March 23 during his visit to the Holy Land.