Dear Friend,

Welcome to The Wiener Holocaust Library's e-newsletter for June 2021.

We are delighted that the Library is now open Tuesday - Friday, 10am - 5pm, for those who have pre-booked. Please see below for further details and information on pre-booking.

This month we are delighted to announce news of an ambitious public campaign to digitise the Library's collections; a statement from the Library's Director; highlights of our new exhibition, Death Marches: Evidence and Memory, and event series; the Library's public tours are resuming; a guest blog post written for Genocide Awareness Month, and a chance to catch up on virtual talks and register for upcoming events.

Kind regards,

The Wiener Holocaust Library

We are thrilled to announce that we are launching a public campaign to build support for the digitalisation of one-third of the Library's unique collections.

The value and scope of digital work have increased in an environment shaped by the global pandemic, and so has the momentum behind the Library’s digital work. This project aims to revolutionise access to our archive. A far greater number of our collections will be available online, via a dedicated digital library. To make this vision a reality we have succeeded in securing just over 40% of the funding for the implementation of our ambitious five-year digital transformation project.

But we still need your help. Your donation will allow us to digitise thousands of pages of unique material, such as early eyewitness reports from concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; evidence of political antisemitism and fascism across Europe, Britain and elsewhere; rare newspapers, diaries and reports written by Holocaust survivors and Displaced Persons after liberation; and correspondence from famous figures including Albert Einstein, Wassily Kandinsky and Hannah Arendt.

The Library’s digitised material will be accessible from anywhere in the world and it will help to inspire new research and facilitate creative responses to archive materials.

Dr Toby Simpson, Director of The Wiener Holocaust Library

The Wiener Holocaust Library is the world’s oldest and Britain’s largest Library of record on the Holocaust and other genocides. Informed by our history and values, we will always seek to connect people with reliable information and to create a space for dialogue, however difficult the circumstances.

We agree with Solutions Not Sides that ‘talking about what’s happening in Israel-Palestine is vital, now and always. But we have to do it while rejecting antisemitic and Islamophobic tropes and speech.’ Solutions Not Sides is a UK-based organisation that works with Israeli and Palestinian speakers and educators. They have also worked with partner organisations (with who we also work) including the Pears Foundation, TellMAMA, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and the Community Security Trust.

Along with others, the Library urges everyone to think before they post on social media, to seek out reliable information, and to start dialogues with people with a range of views and experiences. We recommend engaging with organisations that have gained experience working directly with people affected by the conflict, and those who have thought carefully about the issues at hand. You may want to read the Solutions not Sides blog, for example, which offers advice on how best to avoid antisemitic and Islamophobic tropes when discussing Israel-Palestine. The resources on their website include a useful teachers’ guide that explains issues to consider when facilitating conversations in educational settings.

We look forward to welcoming people from all backgrounds to the Library to learn from our collections, and to engaging in constructive dialogues about the past, the present, and the future.

“The real suffering started then. After three days of marching, we arrived in Gleiwitz. The next day we were taken to Buchenwald. It took us eleven days to get there and we had to face indescribable ordeals.”

The Library’s new exhibition uncovers how forensic and other evidence about the death marches has been gathered since the end of the Holocaust. It chronicles how researchers and others attempted to recover the death march routes – and those who did not survive them. Efforts to analyse and commemorate the death marches continue to this day.

Please note our current COVID-19 opening times and health and safety measures, including wearing a face-covering, before visiting. Entry to the Library is only permitted to those who have pre-booked.

The Death Marches: Evidence and Memory exhibition at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre at the University of Huddersfield opens today. Find out more and book your tickets here. 

These workshops are hybrid events, meaning you may attend virtually or in person at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre (space permitting). Please specify this when registering using the relevant link.

The Library’s free archive tours will be restarting from Monday 14 June. 

You can now join one of our volunteer tour guides to learn about the history of the Library. Visit our archives for an in-depth look at our collections and to see how we collect and preserve valuable material for future generations. 

The tour will last approximately one hour and encompasses the Library's main archive spaces and Wolfson Reading Room.

To ensure safe distancing in our archives, the Library will be closed to other visitors and readers on the day of the tours, and tour groups are limited to a maximum of 4 people. Entry to the building is dependent on wearing a face covering.

The tours will run every Monday and are available to book online. Please note that pre-booking is essential. 

Guest blog by Alan Whitehorn

'Four Generations’ courtesy Alan Whitehorn.

My grandmother (metzmama) was an orphan of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Eastern Turkey. Her entire family was killed, and this young homeless child was found wandering the streets, not knowing her name or age. Somehow amidst the death and destruction she survived. Those who found her named her Sirhoun (English: beautiful). The Red Cross and Church groups provided food and shelter for her and hundreds of thousands of others for a number of agonizing years. As a child, Sirhoun spent ten long and lonely years in various refugee camps and orphanages in one country after another. Eventually, she was to be shipped with other refugees to America, but en route disembarked in Egypt. Adopted by an Armenian family in the diaspora, she worked as a young domestic. A marriage was arranged with another survivor of the genocide, a man much older than she was. Soon one child was born — Vartouie (Rose). Grandfather, however, could not cope with the horrific memory of the genocide and committed suicide while his young bride, my grandmother, was bearing her second child. My grandmother, now a young, impoverished widow, tried to abort the fetus but failed. Her young son survived and many years later went on to win a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. However, long before that joyous day, she endured the difficult times of the 1930s economic Great Depression, witnessed the Second World War, and Rommel’s approaching German army in the desert of Egypt. During the War, millions died, and many lives were disrupted, yet amidst the conflict, a young Englishman and Armenian woman met in Alexandria, Egypt. It was West meets East. The two fell in love and married. When the war ended, Mom and Dad went to England and post-war rationing, while metzmama and her two other children succumbed to Stalinist propaganda and relocated to Armenia in the totalitarian Soviet Union.

The Library is delighted to have loaned the Mucem in Marsailles, France, four of the children's drawings held in our collections that were donated by Waging Peace.

The drawings were made by child survivors of the genocide perpetrated by deposed President Omar al Bashir's Sudanese government forces and the Janjaweed militia against non-Arab Darfuri people since 2003.

The Mucem's new exhibition, Explosions: Children's drawings and mass violence, pays tribute to a very singular gesture of creation: that of the children who, after having been close to death in situations of war or mass crimes, took up colored pencils to tell their stories.

Patterns of Prejudice is a peer-reviewed, international journal published five times a year. Founded in 1967, it is one of the world’s oldest journals to provide a forum for exploring the historical roots and contemporary varieties of social exclusion and the demonization or stigmatization of racial, ethnic, national, or religious Others across the world. In this endeavour, the journal is genuinely interdisciplinary. It aims to be accessible to a large and diverse scholarly audience, including those working across the whole spectrum of Humanities and Social Science subjects, including Cultural and Literary Studies, History, Politics, Sociology and Law.

The editors are now seeking a new co-editor with specific expertise in the study of racisms against people of colour. It is vital that the successful candidate have genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the broad, interdisciplinary scope of the journal and a keen interest in supporting cutting-edge scholarship covering both historical and contemporary issues in a global context. Applicants must be able to demonstrate an interest in taking part in methodologically diverse global conversations on race and racisms, and promoting Patterns of Prejudice as a home for both accessible and cutting-edge research.

One of the latest articles on the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Document blog examines the presentation of rape and male power in oral history interviews. 

A very thoughtful and interesting piece written by Florian Zabransky.

Michael Begum speaks about an incident of potential sexualised violence. The YouTube video clip from the interview of Michael Begum is from the collection of the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. For more information, please visit http://sfi.usc.edu/.

This campaign seeks to raise awareness and develop knowledge about distortion of the Holocaust. It can be harder to spot than outright Holocaust denial, but it is just as dangerous.

Becoming a member is a powerful way you can support us in working towards our wider mission. In return, you can enjoy our exclusive member benefits and know that you are playing a significant role in the future success of the Library.