Germany has ended decades of resistance and agreed to work to open a huge archive of Nazi records on millions of concentration camp inmates and slave labourers.

Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said on Tuesday that Germany will co-operate with the United States in its bid to allow access to the Holocaust archive, housed in a former SS barracks in the town of Bad Arolsen.

• INDEPTH: Auschwitz

A woman works at the scanner of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.(Bernd Kammerer/Associated Press)

The files contain the names and detailed information on roughly 17 million people killed, tortured or forced into slave labour during the Nazi regime.

German officials must next present the idea to a commission of 11 nations that govern the archive at a meeting in Luxembourg in mid-May. The countries could then decide to amend the 1955 treaty that determines access to the files.

One of the largest storehouse of Nazi documents in the world, the archive holds an estimated 50 million files, many seized by Allied soldiers at the end of the Second World War.

If it is opened, historians and families of Holocaust victims will have access to the records.

Until now, survivors and family members have had to request access to files through the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They often had to wait years for a response.

The tracing service is run by the 11-country commission, which includes Germany, the U.S., Belgium, Britain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland.

The United States has been lobbying for years to have the archive opened but Germany has resisted, citing privacy concerns. Italy has also resisted opening the files.

The remaining nine countries all still have to agree before the archive can be opened. Some countries need parliamentary approval before they endorse the plan.