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The Washington National Records Center (WNRC) in Suitland, Maryland, stores and references records of U.S. Federal agencies located in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.
Records are transferred to WNRC when they are no longer needed by the respective agencies, including the records of the Federal Courts in Columbia and the Armed Forces. Those records remain at the WNRC until acceptance as permanent records in the repository, or else they are destroyed and recycled. The records are tracked individually in a database from the time they arrive at the WNRC. While court records are freely available to the public, the majority of records is controlled by their respective originating agency, and all records are subject to the access restrictions specific to that agency.
The WNRC encompasses approximately 789,000 square feet of space and has a capacity to hold over 3.9 million cubic feet of Federal records. Security systems, and fire suppression systems protect the records in the Center. Upon arrival, visitors to the Center must go through security, sign in, and present photo identification at the guard's station in the entrance lobby.
In 2007 the WNRC opened a new Electronic Records Vault. The 976 square-foot vault allow Federal Records Centers to store and service temporary electronic records for Federal agencies.
War crimes lists
In May 1986 the New York Times headlined that master lists of more than 36,000 files of war criminals, suspects and witnesses had been discovered on an "open shelf" in the military archive, that were kept secret in the United Nations archives for nearly 40 years. The United Nations War Crimes Commission operated in London from 1943 to 1948, and collected evidence on war crimes committed by the governments of its 17 members at the time. While investigating the charges a case file on each individuals or unit was opened.The lists, consisting of around 3,000 pages in total, were found accidentally on a shelf in the basement of the WNRC by Richard L. Boylan, an archivist, while searching for other documents. "It didn't strike me as anything special, because they have been available," he said. There are 80 mimeographed lists in total, that were assembled chronologically by the United Nations War Crimes Commission from 1943 to 1948. The lists contain major WWII figures such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and some of the most wanted Nazi war criminals sought by governments worldwide, amongst them Alois Brunner, a former deputy of Adolf Eichmann, Walter Kutschmann, a former Gestapo leader, Dr. Hans Wilhelm König, a former deputy of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz as well as former Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.
Listed are German industrialists and factory owners accused of exploitation of forced labor, Jewish prisoners used by the Germans as prison guards, and Japanese soldiers wanted for war crimes by Australia, Italian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Rumanian war criminals.