Holocaust survivors, relatives unlock wartime secrets through International Tracing Service database

For decades, Howard Bergman has clung to the "absolutely atrocious" memories of his boyhood in Poland, when his family was herded into Nazi labor camps and his father and brother were murdered.

Susan Nesher and her sisters had spent years wondering about a mystery from their father's past: the family they'd heard he lost in the Holocaust before he married their mother, a part of his history he would not discuss.

In recent months, Bergman, 83, of Skokie, has learned details about his father's death that had eluded him for more than 65 years. Nesher, 56, of Highland Park, has been able to fill in some of the blank pages in her family's history, including the names of her two half-siblings.

They are among the innumerable Holocaust-era secrets that have been unlocked through the International Tracing Service, through which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., helps survivors and others search thousands of wartime documents....