Family separation in Germany during and after the Second World War left records scattered across tracing services, government archives, newspapers, churches, and local institutions. A new German-language research guide from the Association for Computer Genealogy (CompGen) brings several of these sources together and explains how families and researchers can request information.

These collections were not created specifically for Black German adoptees or for children adopted into the United States. Nevertheless, they may provide important clues when a family history intersects with wartime evacuation, displacement, refugee movements, institutional placement, a name or identity change, or the loss of contact between relatives.

Why these records matter

Postwar family searches often cannot be resolved through a single birth certificate or adoption file. A useful search may require comparing civil records with tracing cards, newspaper notices, refugee-registration records, church files, immigration records, adoption decrees, and local archives. Even when a collection does not document an adoption directly, it may establish where a person lived, which relatives were searching, how a name was recorded, or when a family became separated.

German Red Cross Child Tracing Service

The German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, or DRK) Child Tracing Service investigates the histories of children separated from their families through war, evacuation, flight, and expulsion. According to the CompGen guide, approximately 300,000 registered child cases have been clarified since 1945, while fewer than 5,000 remain unresolved.

The DRK’s Central Name Index contains approximately 50 million cards, including child files and several specialized collections. The index is not available as a public online database; DRK staff conduct searches in response to inquiries. Eligible family members may submit a request without charge, although the service reports significant processing times.

Church tracing records and the Federal Archives

The former Church Tracing Service of Caritas and the Protestant relief service maintained Heimatortskarteien—place-of-origin card indexes created from postwar tracing forms. These records can help bridge gaps between 1945 and the 1950s by showing where displaced families were subsequently registered and which people traveled or resettled together.

The Church Tracing Service closed in 2015. Its records were transferred to the German Federal Archives in 2016, and the original card indexes are held by the Federal Archives’ Lastenausgleichsarchiv in Bayreuth. Researchers must apply to the Federal Archives for access or assistance.

Postwar newspapers and regional archives

Families also placed search notices in postwar newspapers, tracing publications, radio announcements, and illustrated posters. Digitization remains incomplete, so an unsuccessful online search does not establish that no notice exists. Regional archives, local libraries, the German Newspaper Portal, and Archivportal-D may hold additional material that is not available through ordinary web searches.

Relevance—and limits—for Black German adoption research

These tracing collections should not be treated as dedicated databases of Black German children, occupation children, “Brown Babies,” or international adoptees. They primarily document separation connected to war, flight, evacuation, and expulsion. They are therefore most promising when an individual or family history overlaps with those circumstances.

For Black German adoptees and their descendants, these sources may be most useful when combined with German civil-registration records, child-welfare and institutional files, church and municipal archives, adoption records, U.S. immigration A-files, naturalization records, and family testimony. Names, spellings, birth dates, and legal identities may differ across collections and should be searched in multiple forms.

Research links

BGHRA provides historical information and research guidance. The availability, scope, and access rules of individual collections are determined by the institutions that hold them. Last updated September 2026.