Dear Friend,

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

Sadly, the Library remains closed until further notice in line with the most recent government advice. Please see below for more details.

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Library's new digital resource Testifying to the Truth; our virtual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration event; the launch of the Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership; a vignette from the Library's archives and a chance to catch up on virtual talks and register for upcoming events.

We know this is a difficult time for everyone, and we continue to send our very best wishes to you all.

Kind regards,

The Wiener Holocaust Library

This online database shares eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust, many of which have never been available to the public online before and have been translated, by a team of the Library’s volunteers, into English for the first time. We would like to sincerely thank all of the Library’s volunteers who have been a part of this translation effort. This project would not have been possible without them.

Topics covered by the eyewitness accounts range from descriptions of the experience of living through Nazi ghettos, concentration and death camps, to the stories of those who hid from the Nazis, either in plain sight using false identities, or in attics and cellars. The authors were Jewish, Roma and Sinti survivors as well as Germans who witnessed Nazi persecution. There are also several testimonies from those who participated in resistance activities against the Nazis and their perpetrators and those who managed to escape from the death camps.

We would like to thank Smithsonian Magazine for highlighting Testifying to the Truth in this online article.

“History is important. Facts are important. During these unsettling times, it can feel like they are under attack.”

On Friday 22 January we were honoured to host a moving and reflective virtual commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

This year's theme, Be the Light in the Darkness, asks us to recognise that the responsibility for education and prevention lies with all of us. As the distortion of the Holocaust has sadly become more widespread, we have a greater responsibility than ever to face the truth about the nature of genocide and tackle the threat posed by propaganda and hate.

We were delighted to be joined by the Leader of the Her Majesty’s Opposition, and the Library’s local MP for Holborn and St Pancras, Sir Keir Starmer. The virtual event featured testimonies drawn from the Library’s collections, read by British actor Olivia Williams. There were also reflections from The Rt Hon Lord Eric Pickles, Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues and Rabbi Jeremy Gordon from the New London Synagogue.

The event was concluded with a memorial prayer from Cantor Jaclyn Chernett.

We are delighted that the Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership website is now live!

The HGRP is a new joint endeavour initiated by The Wiener Holocaust Library, The Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London, University of Huddersfield and Holocaust Exhibition & Learning Centre.

Please watch this short film below to learn more about this exciting new partnership and our upcoming plans.

You can follow the HGRP on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

This exhibition will uncover how forensic and other evidence about the death marches have been gathered since the end of the Holocaust. It will chronicle how researchers and others have attempted to recover the death march routes - and remember those who did not survive them. 

We are delighted to announce that we will be virtually celebrating the launch of this exhibition with special guest speakers on Thursday 25 February. We will be releasing tickets for this event over the coming days, please stay tuned!

The Wiener Holocaust Library Ernst Fraenkel Prize is a prestigious annual competition for book-length academic manuscripts on the Holocaust, its context and implications, and twentieth-century and post-Holocaust genocides.

We are delighted to announce the Ernst Fraenkel Prize 2020 joint winners. Judged by Dr Zoë Waxman (University of Oxford), Professor Tim Cole (University of Bristol) and Professor Debórah Dwork (City University of New York), the submissions this year showcased some outstanding work.

The 2020 prize has been jointly awarded to:

Dr Andrew Kornbluth, for their work, The August Trials: The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland interrogates the trials that took place in Poland at the immediate end of the war and points to the origins of themes that persist within the politics of memory in contemporary Poland over the question of Polish complicity in the Holocaust

Dr Joanna Sliwa, for their work, Jewish Childhood in Krakow: A Microhistory of the Holocaust which immerses the reader in the thick description through the lifeworlds of children in the Krakow ghetto

The judging panel also highly commended the following Finalist:

Dr Elizabeth Anthony, for their work The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews After the Holocaust which examines the shifting meanings of what returning ‘home’ meant for Jewish survivors in Vienna in the second half of the 1940s.

We are now accepting submissions for The Ernst Fraenkel Prize 2021. Please visit the Library's website for more information regarding submission requirements. 

By Howard Falksohn, Senior Archivist 

Duden’s Lexicon adopts the classic British proclivity for the understatement in its definition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung: “public debate within a country on a problematic period of its recent history…” The fact is, however, that the term is commonly understood to mean Germany’s coming to terms (or not) with the Holocaust both collectively and on an individual basis.

There has been a proliferation of literature on the subject in the last couple of decades, so much so, that The Wiener Holocaust Library has a whole section dedicated to it. Publications include scholarly analyses of guilt and shame in entire communities to personal memoirs detailing how individual families wrestled with the role of their forebears. No doubt the lapse of time since the events themselves has facilitated this dialogue - in many cases initiated by second, third and fourth generation Germans.

Whilst the Library holds a number of primary source materials from the point of view of the perpetrator, these take the form of published memoirs and diaries of prominent Nazis and reprinted testimony from defendants and witnesses in war crimes trials. The overwhelming majority of the Library’s original manuscript, diaries, letters and personal documents stem from the families of the victims of Nazi persecution.

A rare exception is one letter unearthed amongst The Wiener Library holdings almost 20 years ago. The very recent discovery of it via a description on the portal, Archives Hub, has immersed the family of the author into an intense period of soul-searching.

To find out more please read the rest of Howard's blog online via the button below.

Letter from SS Oberreiter Emmerich Menzner, member of a veterinär Ersatzkompanie in Radau (?), Poland, to Armin Düsterfest in Rückwerda, near Litzmannstadt (Lodz), 19 March 1942. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

Anthony Wells worked at The Wiener Holocaust Library in London for a decade. In this podcast episode, he leads the Slightly Foxed editors into the history of the Library and discusses how Dr Alfred Wiener ensured that those who disappeared in the Holocaust are not forgotten.

We are looking forward to the Leo Baeck Education Center's virtual book talk with Michael A. Meyer and Lord Daniel Finklestein on Sunday 7 February, 2-3pm (UK).

Tune in to hear Michael A. Meyer discuss his new biography of Rabbi Leo Baeck, one of the most inspiring theologians and significant Jewish religious thinkers of the 20th century.

The Kristel Fellowships are funded by the European Union under the rules of transnational access and are thus principally intended for applicants working at institutions established in member states (the EU-27) and states associated to Horizon 2020. Candidates from Central and Eastern Europe are especially encouraged to apply. It is not possible to apply for a Kristel Fellowship at an institution in the same country where one works.

Deadline for applications: 15 March 2021

9 March 2021, 2.00pm - 11 March 2021, 3.00pm, online

It has long been recognised that the experiences of refugees from National Socialism, their persecution, incarceration, hiding, emigration, resettlement, further migration, trauma and later lives have had an impact on their children and grandchildren. This conference will explore this in all its facets and different expressions and will focus both on the relationship between the generations as well as the specific differences between generations.

Participation free. Advance booking essential.

The Jewish Museum London is offering a virtual version of their weekly tour. The next one is taking place on Monday 8 February, 3.30-4.15pm. 

Book here.