Dear Friend,

Welcome to The Wiener Holocaust Library's e-newsletter for August 2020.

Please see below for a statement from the Library's Director, Dr Toby Simpson, on the prevalence of antisemitism on social media platforms and on the evidence of human rights abuses being committed against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, China.

This month we are delighted to announce that the Library will be opening our new exhibition Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust to the public on Thursday 6 August. Please note that restrictions apply due to the Covid-19 crisis. See below for further details.

We are delighted to announce that a version of our exhibition, Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti, is being launched online by the United Nations; we also share an exclusive Forgotten Victims exhibition blog written by Professor Eve Rosenhaft; an opportunity to catch up on recent virtual talks and more.

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

The failure of Twitter and Instagram to deal with antisemitic abuse published on their platforms sadly comes as no surprise. Last week, Wiley, a well-known musician, shared Holocaust denial and racist messages to his hundreds of thousands of followers. These messages were left online for far too long, given their obviously hateful content and intent. 

In response to this, the Library participated in a 48-hour social media walkout in an effort to call out platforms to act now to prevent messages of hate from being posted and shared. 

We are pleased to learn that Wiley has now been permanently banned from Twitter. In future, mainstream social media platforms must do better in dealing with antisemitism, Holocaust denial and other forms of hate speech. 

Statement from the Library’s Director Toby Simpson on the evidence of human rights abuses being committed against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, China:

We are gravely concerned by reports of human rights abuses against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, China, including accounts of crimes of genocide.

As Britain's largest repository of evidence of the Holocaust and other genocides, The Wiener Holocaust Library will continue to use our platform to draw attention to this issue and to amplify the voices of victims.

We join the Bar Human Rights Committee, the Board of Deputies, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and other institutions in urging governments to take steps to bring an end to any ongoing violations of international law.

Please visit our website to read the statement in full and to view some of our suggested further reading.

Visit the René Cassin website to find out what further action you can take.

We are delighted to announce that the Library's new exhibition Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust will open to the public on Thursday 6 August 2020.

We are initially reopening with reduced opening times (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11am – 3pm), and only allowing those with pre-booked appointments to view the exhibition. Visit our website for further information on bookings.

We are also reopening with a range of new health and safety measures, please visit our website for more details. The safety and wellbeing of all our staff and visitors is of paramount importance.

We continue to monitor Government guidelines and advice, and as such, our regulations are under constant review and might change at short notice. In visiting us you agree to abide by our safety measures. 

We appreciate your patience as we continue to navigate these uncertain times. We will continue to keep you updated via our website and Twitter. 

We look forward to welcoming you back to the Library soon!

Staff working to install the latest exhibition Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust at The Wiener Holocaust Library.

In this short video, Senior Curator and Head of Education, Dr Barbara Warnock, highlights some of the Library’s unique archival collections that tell the story of the Jewish men and women who, as the Holocaust unfolded around them, and at great risk to themselves, resisted the Nazis and their collaborators.

To mark Roma Holocaust Memorial Day, The Wiener Holocaust Library are delighted to announce that a version of our exhibition, Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti, is being launched online by the United Nations.

If you would like to join us at the virtual launch event, please register here.

August, a Sinti boy (centre), photographed by Hanns Weltzel, Germany, c. 1933-1937. One of the other children was likely called Sonja Laúbinger. August and Sonja died in Auschwitz, as almost certainly did the other child. Courtesy of University of Liverpool Library.

What links all of the objects and images in The Wiener Holocaust Library’s exhibition, Forgotten Victims – The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti is the fact of the persecution of Roma and Sinti all over Europe: by the Nazi state in Germany, by the German authorities in occupied territories, and by governments and police agencies which were neither German nor acting under compulsion by Germans. Four of the items on display, documenting the situation and fate of German Sinti, are intimately connected to each other; their connection carries an important message about responsibility and mutual respect – and about how genocide happens.

Three of the items are photographs.

(L) Kurt Ansin, c. 1940. Bundesarchiv, Bild R 165-88. 

(R) The visit of three Sinti women, including Erna Lauenburger (first left), to Hanns Weltzel’s house. Weltzel’s wife, Klara, is pictured left, c. mid-1930s. Courtesy of University of Liverpool Library, Hanns Weltzel.

To register your interest for either of the below events please email Lesley Urbach. 

Leah Sidebotham is the Digital Asset Manager at The Wiener Holocaust Library and is currently completing an MA at King’s College London. Her research focuses on projects which collect material on different aspects of the Holocaust but aren’t organised by traditional archives like The Wiener Holocaust Library, USHMM or Yad Vashem.

Examples of community projects include:

• Kitchener Camp Descendants Group
• AJR Refugee Voices
• Harwich Haven
• Roma Stories
• Lake District Holocaust Project
• Warth Mills Project

She is particularly keen on finding out what motivated you to participate in the project, whether you have been involved in other heritage/archiving projects, how you think official archives can better support community projects like these and your views on Holocaust memorialisation more generally.

If you have contributed to any of the above projects or anything similar, she would be very grateful if you would share your views in this survey. It should take less than 10 minutes to do so.

You can also get in touch via email.

DialoguePerspectives develops and establishes new and innovative forms of interfaith-worldview dialogue. Its mission is to meaningfully contribute to European understanding and collaboration, to the strengthening and defence of European civil society, and to the shaping of a pluralistic and democratic Europe grounded in the principle of solidarity.

Since 2015, more than 200 students and doctoral candidates of diverse religious and worldview orientations have come together through the programme. With the support of the Federal Foreign Office, the program has been extended to a European platform for training future leaders in academia, culture, politics, and business to become experts in a new, societally-oriented interfaith-worldview dialogue.

The participants reflect the religious, political, and societal plurality of European society. They incorporate their diverse backgrounds and experiences to create a fertile ground for exchange, finding an urgently necessary space for encounter, exchange, and dialogue at DialoguePerspectives. 

Deadline for participation in the first seminar ends on 15 August 2020.