U.S. Army Employs Kofax Imaging Technology to Expose Nazi War Crimes Records.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 2001

Ascent Capture Product Assists Government Project To Declassify

Millions of World War II-Era Documents For New National Archives

Database

More than 1.2 million documents related to Nazi war criminal records have been processed and reviewed by the U.S. Army through the use of a high-volume document capture application from Kofax Image Products.

The Army captured, scanned and indexed information that revealed the exploits of a host of Nazi-era individuals, from Jewish rescuer Oskar Schindler to notorious mass murderer Theodor Dannecker.

As a result, more than 16,000 documents containing vital historical material will be delivered to the National Archives in Washington D.C. for future public access. Some of these files, which were previously stored in thousands of aging microfilm reels, revealed significant information about several key World War II figures. The documents disclosed that:

-- German rocket scientist Werner von Braun was mystified by the Allied bombing
of his secret V2 rocket factories. Little did he know that a German
industrialist, Eduard Schulte, was feeding intelligence to Allied forces on
Nazi advanced weapons programs as well as early reports that the Germans
planned the extermination of the Jewish population in Europe.

-- The wartime exploits of businessman and Jewish rescuer Oskar Schindler were
illustrated in Steven Spielberg's award-winning movie "Schindler's List." Less
is known of Schindler's activities after the war. The newly reviewed documents
reveal that Schindler helped Jewish survivors track down Nazi concentration
camp guards and officials.

-- Theodor Dannecker, a top associate of "Final Solution" architect Adolph
Eichmann, was rumored to have evaded justice. Army documentation indicates that
he committed suicide by poisoning a day after his capture in 1945. Dannecker's
last letter to his wife prior to his suicide is also stored in the database.
During the last days of World War II, he had asked his wife to poison their two
children. One survived and he asked his wife, in the letter, to kiss the
surviving child.

These revelations and more are contained on thousands of World War II-era microfilm reels that were in poor condition and difficult to read, with some film scratched or deteriorated, according to Lonnie Manning, a document management expert working with the Army.

"We needed superior technology for what appeared to be an impossible task," said Manning. "Kofax Ascent Capture made it possible for us to handle millions of diverse and difficult-to-read images, find key information, and deliver the results on deadline."

An urgent deadline was set when Army Lieutenant General Robert Noonan made a commitment to identify the records for declassification within one year.

"Until this time, there was no proven technology capable of capturing and organizing the war criminal records, and manual review would take an estimated 181 person-years to complete," Manning added.

Ascent Capture software designed for high-performance electronic document and data capture applications enabled Manning and his staff to verify the 1.2 million scanned documents, validate extracted data, index it for later retrieval and send it seamlessly into a document management system. Ascent Capture, known for its robust and sophisticated image processing, was coupled with high-speed microfilm scanners to create an effective solution designed to tackle the enormity of the project.

"We designed a solution that demanded exceptional performance from Ascent Capture, and pushed the system beyond anything we've seen before," Manning said. "Nothing else would have been up to the task. It held together through a continuous workload, server failures, and even lightening strikes."

The project was triggered by the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, which mandates the identification, review for declassification, and release to the public of records related to war crimes and criminals of World War II Axis governments. A review of the U.S. Army's Investigative Records Repository at Fort Meade revealed 11,400 reels of microfilm that contained essential information relating to Nazi war crimes.

Manning built a custom index script to query data derived from the Defense Clearance and Investigative Index database against a collection of names, numbers and key words associated with Nazi war crimes. Manual indexing for the project included information such as last and first names, aliases, date of birth, locater numbers, operational terms and code words.

"The U.S. Army's project demanded optimum performance," said Kevin Drum, general manager of Kofax's Ascent Software Business Unit. "Ascent Capture provided a fast, flexible document capture and indexing solution. It enabled the Army to process 60,000 documents a week."

With the information now in electronic format, the National Archives will conduct an audit and review process to confirm the reported results. By this spring all declassified information is expected to be released to the public through research facilities at the National Archives.

About Kofax Image Products

Kofax Image Products, www.kofax.com, is a leading supplier of both application software and image processing products for the imaging, workflow and document management industry. The company specializes in the document capture market, which is essential to helping paper intensive organizations economically, reliably and securely incorporate paper-based information into their electronic business processes. It is a member of the DICOM Group plc.