Siemens opens Nazi camp file

Each February, Gilbert Michlin invites fellow survivors and their spouses to his birthday party at his home in Paris. Before making a l'chaim, Mr Michlin remembers how, two days before his 18th birthday in 1944, he was deported from Paris and sent to a slave-labour sub-camp of Auschwitz.

This year, Mr Michlin turned 85. For decades, he has been asking: why did Siemens keep him and 87 other slave labourers alive? What happened to the other men who worked for Siemens, in the heart of the Nazi killing machine?

Answers might be in the company archive. Its director, Frank Wittendorfer, says Siemens central archive in Munich has 2.5 linear miles of files, 400,000 photos and 3,000 films....