In an interview conducted at Bad Arolsen during my week there, Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.—arguably the person who fought the archives' continued closure to outside research most vigorously—explained the task of the 16 historians brought to Bad Arolsen in June. "There is so much that it is difficult to get a handle on where to begin. The materials have never been a part of the research or educational resources that we have had available," he explained, noting that the museum had asked the "16 participants to identify the areas [of the archives] that hold the greatest promise in their eyes. To suggest priorities for cataloging." Shapiro maintained that "the biggest challenge is gaining an understanding of the material in terms that will help people to do research. The most common description of the documentation at ITS that was used for 50 years was [that] they are 'lists of victims'—lists of prisoners, lists of names. But, in the first place, it is more diverse materials than that. And, secondly, a list of names takes on a different meaning when it is looked at through the eyes of a researcher or someone who knows the history, or through the eyes of someone who wants to understand the dynamic among populations, or what brought survival rather than death. Here you can sample different kinds of people as they made their way through—or failed to survive—the Nazi system. … The first challenge is having people understand that there is a broader significance to this material, and the material has to be mobilized and integrated into the way we understand the Holocaust."