Joan Lefkowitz knows her parents and two of her sisters perished in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. She and other family members were lucky. They survived.

But the fate of her older brother, Alexander Braun, has gnawed at her for a large part of her 86 years.

The Miami Beach resident has been told her brother was taken from a labor camp in Hungary and marched toward Russia, but beyond that she's heard only speculation.

''He disappeared,'' said Lefkowitz, who was born in Czechoslovakia. ``I would like to know what happened.''

On Sunday, her daughter-in-law, Terry Lefkowitz, filled out a request for any available information about her brother from the International Tracing Service archive in Bad Arolsen, Germany -- a repository of more than 100 million documents collected by the Allies after the war.

The documents, mostly from Western and Central Europe, had been open to the public for some years after the war and then sealed until last November.

Representatives from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., along with survivors and others, gathered in an auditorium at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital at Douglas Gardens to talk about the information available in the archives and how to request it.

''Survivors are dying, and so many, for the last 62 years, haven't been able to get answers about themselves or their family,'' said Arthur Berger, senior advisor for external affairs at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

SPREADING THE WORD

He and others from the museum have traveled to large ''survivor communities'' in the United States, making similar presentations in other parts of South Florida, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

The struggle to get the International Tracing Service archive open took several years and the agreement of 11 governments.

Also lobbying to get the archives opened were members of Congress, among them South Florida Reps. Alcee Hastings, Robert Wexler and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who spoke at Sunday's event.

''These records we hope will provide many Holocaust survivors . . . with critical data, information about their loved ones,'' said Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican. ``They want to know who from my family was in what camp, what happened, what was their fate.''

Currently under way is the process of photocopying the documents and putting them in a digital format. The archives contained information about 17.5 million victims of the Nazis.

Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to victims of the Holocaust, and the Polish government also have copies of the documents, Berger said.

At the museum in Washington, volunteers and museum staff comb through the paperwork -- from concentration camps to arrest and transport records -- answering requests from people trying to find out more about their relatives.

Since January, the museum has answered about 7,000 requests -- though the response sometimes is that there is no information.

Documents from the archives meant answers for David Mermelstein, 79, of Kendall.

Mermelstein sent in his request form about six months ago, and on Sunday he held a bunch of color photocopies of cards bearing the name of his brother, Samuel Mermelstein.

The cards follow his brother's journey from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen, where the two were separated.

''He went to Dachau, then to Flossenbürg,'' said Mermelstein, who lived with his family in Czechoslovakia before the war. ''On the 26th of March, 1945, that's where it ends,'' he said, his voice trailing off.

''I didn't know what happened to him at all after May of '44,'' said Mermelstein, one of the co-founders in Florida of Cafe Europa, which sponsors events that bring Holocaust survivors together.

HUNT FOR A BROTHER

Mermelstein is already prepared with his next request -- finding more about another brother, Frank, whom he last saw in February 1945.

''These documents weren't available until recently,'' he said. ``We carried this wondering, hoping. Now at least we get some peace.''

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