DRK Tracing Service Office established

Source: drk The Tracing Service Liaison Office of the German Red Cross: „These children are looking for their parents“

On 30 July 1947 the Tracing Service Liaison Office of the German Red Cross (DRK) is founded in Berlin. Since the end of the war one out of four Germans has been looking for one or more missing relatives: soldiers missing in action, families separated while fleeing and children who went missing. All over Germany, on the walls of buildings, in destroyed train terminals, on advertising pillars and on the masts of street lights, hang slips of paper with the names and photos of the lost. The Tracing Service suffers especially daunting problems in its search for children: How are children to be identified, what procedures should be used in the search for these children if they do not even know their own names? Since 1945 the German Caritas Association, the Evangelical Church’s relief organisation, and the DRK have been putting together a collective tracing file. Over the course of years more than seven million people will be reunited. However, for many the death of a relative becomes a tragic certainty. The fate of more than a million people remains unexplained.