Dear Friend,

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

In this issue we are pleased to announce the launch of the Library's new exhibition, Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today; our free public archive tours are back; registration for our first educational day for Camden schools is open, and the publication of a new educational article on The Holocaust Explained.

You can also catch up on virtual talks and register for upcoming events.

Kind regards,

The Wiener Holocaust Library

Through our new exhibition, we seek to help educate visitors on the complex history of antisemitism. We want visitors to be inspired by the rich history of anti-antisemites. 

In this opinion piece article, we explore how we can learn from the past to effectively fight antisemitism today, wherever it is found. 

The Community Security Trust's (CST) Antisemitic Incidents Report 2021, published in February 2022, shows 2,255 anti-Jewish hate incidents reported across Britain in 2021. This is the highest annual total that CST has ever recorded and is a 34% increase from 2020.

Antisemitism continues to pose a very real threat to Jews in Britain, Europe and around the world.

The Library's new exhibition has been curated partly in response to worrying trends in contemporary antisemitism, including the rise in harassment of Jews in recent years, and the spread of conspiracy theories online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This exhibition reveals the history of the fight against antisemitism over the last century in France, Britain and Germany. Through unique and never seen before documents from the Library's collections, and striking photographs from CST's archives, we spotlight the stories of the individuals, organisations and campaigns that have fought against antisemitism since the time of the Dreyfus Affair in 1890s France. 

The arrest, trial and imprisonment of Jewish French army officer Alfred Dreyfus on false charges of espionage became a sensation in France and across Europe, galvanising both antisemites and their opponents.

These handbooks were written to provide practical assistance to those fighting antisemitism and were published by Büro Wilhelmstrasse in the early 1930s. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

The exhibition shines a light on the various strategies that those fighting against antisemitism have taken over the last one hundred years and more, from publishing pamphlets refuting antisemitic ideas, to gathering evidence about the activities of antisemites, to street fighting and the infiltration of fascist groups.

To mark the launch of the Library's new exhibition, Dr Dave Rich, Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), has written an article for the Library to detail what the fight back against antisemitism looks like in the UK today.

In February 2022, the CST research team published on Twitter how they tracked down the precise locations of highly antisemitic posters in London and reported them to the police.

You can now visit the world’s Holocaust archives for an in-depth view of our historic collections and to see first-hand how we collect and preserve valuable material for future generations.

From Tuesday 5 April, you will be able to join a tour of the Library with our well-informed volunteer tour guides to learn about our history and our work going forward.

The tours run every Tuesday 2-3pm and last approximately one hour, encompassing the Library’s main archive space where you’ll have the opportunity to view fascinating and rare historical documents from the Holocaust whilst also being able to take a look around the Wolfson Reading Room.

If you would like more information, pre-book a place on one of our free Tuesday tours, or to register for a private tour, please email the Library’s Visitor Services, Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, Aaron Brohi, abrohi@wienerholocaustlibrary.org.

Children with a teacher in a classroom in Eschwege Displaced Persons camp, c. 1946-1948. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

We are delighted to announce a one-day event organised specifically for GCSE and A-Level students attending school or college in the London Borough of Camden on Thursday 28 April, 10am-4pm.

Run by the Library’s experienced education team, we have organised an exciting day of talks and workshops for students in Camden to deepen their understanding of the Nazi era and the Holocaust through engagement with the Library’s unique and historic archive; as well as hearing from guest speakers including Holocaust academic Dr Rebecca Jinks of Royal Holloway and Holocaust survivor Ruth Schwiening. You can read the full programme here.

The day is an exclusive opportunity for schools in Camden and places for the day will be given on a first come first serve basis. You can either book in for the whole day or specific events, capacity for each session is shown in the programme attached. All aspects of the programme are free.

If you would like to secure spaces for your students for either the day or specific sessions, please email education@wienerholocaustlibrary.org and provide us with the following: your name and position in school, your school’s name, whether you would like to attend the whole day or set sessions, the school year of the students attending and the number of students you hope to attend.

The event will feature talks from the Library’s Dr Christine Schmidt and Elise Bath; Professor Dan Stone from The Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London; Professor Cathy Gelbin from Manchester University; Pamela Linen Aveyard from Imperial War Museum North and others.

There will also be an exhibition launch; and the opportunity for one-on-one appointments with ITS researchers.

More details to follow.

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article on the Library's online educational website The Holocaust Explained exploring the Nazi Party's approach to, and the experiences of, women in the Third Reich.

The article seeks to explain the ways in which women were central to the Nazis' version of the Third Reich and their future Volksgemeinschaft by looking at the principles of Küche, Kinder and Kirche, female employment, and the participation and resistance of women in the Nazi regime.

Basic Recipes as a Key to the Art of Cooking: examples of some recipes from a 1931 cookbook. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

The Roma Support Group has created a short survey to gauge whether teachers in secondary schools would benefit from having resource material on the Roma genocide during the Second World War and Roma migration in the UK.

Completing the survey will inform our practice and policy team.

Discover how images shape the way we remember history with The Eye As Witness – a major exhibition using creative technology to contrast Holocaust photos taken by perpetrators with the perspective of victims.

The Eye as Witness is an immersive multimedia experience examining Holocaust photography. It has been designed to make us question the motives behind the recording of historical events and to encourage critical thinking on racism, hatred and ‘fake news’ today.

Taking the instantly recognisable Nazi-propaganda images of sub-human victims in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, visitors are led to reconsider the images as persecuted and dignified humans living ‘everyday’ lives only days before the Nazis came to power.

Featured in the exhibition is an award-winning immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. This cutting-edge experience enabled visitors to enter a virtual environment and ‘step into’ a Nazi-produced Holocaust photograph taken in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Alongside this are interactive displays, which offer visitors the opportunity to view the rare secret photos taken by Jewish people and members of the anti-Nazi resistance who use the camera to record the story as they saw it.

This workshop will explore the ways to recognize those who have experienced forced migration or genocides as agents in the past as well as documenters and knowledge producers of that past.

During the last decade, scholars have highlighted the ways in which refugees have been given space in the writing of history and debated why refugees as actors have received so little attention. It had been argued that in cases where “refugees” and “survivors” are investigated, they are usually portrayed as an unnamed mass—passive victims of persecution, war, or revolution—not as named actors in various contexts.

The importance of placing the people defined as refugees and survivors at the heart of history writing and exploring their perspectives, actions, experiences, and self-understanding has been stressed by historians, and refugee scholars and Holocaust scholars.

One aim of the workshop is to explore the role that refugees, forced migrants and genocide survivors have played and continue to play in documenting, remembering and producing knowledge about genocide, oppression and forced migration.

Join Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on Tuesday 5 April as they launch the new theme for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2023. At this free online event, you will hear about the new theme and how it can be applied in local HMD activities. Illustrator and author Barbara Yelin, and Holocaust survivor Dr Martin Stern MBE will also be in conversation, discussing why the theme resonates with them, and why it is relevant to us all today.

In this Generation2Generation event, Jeanette Marx tells the story of her mother, Mascha Nachmansson, born, in Łódź, Poland in 1920. You will hear how Mascha survived 5 years of slave labour in the Łódź ghetto and was then transported to Auschwitz concentration camp which she described as ‘hell on earth’. She was finally liberated from Ravensbrück concentration camp in April 1945. Jeanette tells this story using her mother’s extremely moving video testimony.

This is an online event taking place on Zoom.

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.