Dear Friend,

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

This month we are delighted to announce that the Library will be reopening to the public on Tuesday 14 July 2020. 

We are also pleased to share highlights of the impact of ITS research in Britain; a celebration event for the Library's upcoming exhibition Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust; a brand new event series hosted by the Library, and an opportunity to catch up on recent virtual talks and register for upcoming events.

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

Kind regards,

The Wiener Holocaust Library

We are pleased to announce that the Library will be partially reopening on Tuesday 14 July 2020.

We will initially reopen with reduced opening times (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11am – 3pm), with only pre-booked appointments in the Wolfson Reading Room, and a range of new health and safety measures. Our exhibition space remains closed, and we will keep you updated on when we will be opening our new exhibition to the public.

We continue to monitor the situation with respects to the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such, our regulations are under constant review and might change at short notice. The safety and wellbeing of all our staff and visitors is of paramount importance and we thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to navigate this uncertain time.

Please visit our website for further details or contact us if you have any queries.

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

We can't do our important work of reuniting families and advancing scholarship on the Holocaust without your support. Please watch this film to find out more about what we do and visit our website for more information on how you can help.

To commemorate the end of the UK's year of chairing the International Commission that oversees the work of the Arolsen Archives (formerly, the International Tracing Service), the Library produced this short film about its work with the ITS archive. We have helped hundreds of families and scholars navigate the archive's 30 million pages. The Library is the only point of access in the UK to the full digital archive.

Jewish Lithuanian partisans, July 1944. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

The Wiener Holocaust Library staff are working hard to bring you our new exhibition, Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust, and aim to open it to the public in August.

On 5th August, we are delighted to announce that distinguished Professor of History Samuel Kassow will speak at an event to celebrate our new exhibition, along with Director of The Wiener Holocaust Library, Dr Toby Simpson, and the exhibition’s curator, Dr Barbara Warnock. Other speakers to be confirmed.

In September we will continue to showcase this exhibition through a series of virtual talks including Dr Daniela Ozacky-Stern on From the Ghetto Underground to Partisan Warfare: Jewish Resistance in the Second World War and Dr Anna Hajkova on Jewish Communist Resisters in Theresienstadt. Further events will follow in October and November.

Do please stay updated via our website and Twitter for further information.

General Lieutenant Lothar von Trotha, the chief military commander in German South-West Africa, with his staff during the Herero uprising, 1904. Courtesy of: Bundesarchiv

In the late nineteenth century, pseudo-scientific ideas about racial ‘fitness’ and ‘health’, and about the supposed superiority and inferiority of ‘races’ provided justifications and impetus for European colonialism projects in Asia and Africa, as well as for antisemitic and anti-Gypsy prejudice and policies. Theories about racial ‘degeneracy’ fuelled hostility against gay men, lesbians and other marginalised groups. Notions of racial hierarchy structured and infused the British Empire, and eugenicist ideas and practices were widespread in Europe and the United States. Some of these ideas manifested themselves in racist scientific research directed against colonial subjects, as well as in violence, oppression and even genocide, for example, in German South-West-Africa (today Namibia). Many historians argue that in the twentieth century, the Nazis’ racist genocidal ideas can be understood as to some extent a development from Germany’s imperial past.

In the twenty-first century, antisemitic conspiracies have gained new life through online dissemination, eugenicist ideas once again have an influence on the far right, and questions are asked of how Britain remembers and misremembers its colonial past. Understanding and reflecting upon the historical roots and antecedents for these developments, and the calamitous results they can produce, is therefore of critical importance.

We are delighted to be welcoming Angela Saini, Professor Marius Turda and Dr Joe Mulhall to a virtual discussion for the series' inaugural event on Wednesday 22 July 2020. This online conversation will examine and explore the history of 'race science' and eugenics, and its connections to nationalist, far-right and fascist politics in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

How did Soviet photographers individualise and universalise the horror of the Holocaust? To what extent can their photographs of grief be read as multi-layered commentaries on Soviet, Jewish, and human identity? Why did these photographers develop a type of post-realist narrative of suffering as a visual commodity and how was it received or contested?

On Thursday 28 May 2020, the Library hosted an exploratory online workshop with Professor David Shneer, an acclaimed scholar of Russian and Jewish history and author of the forthcoming book, Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph, who explored these questions through a close analysis of the work of Soviet photojournalist Evgeni Khaldei and his photograph, ‘Grigory Berman Finds Murdered Wife and Children, 1942’.

This workshop was open to university faculty to reflect on or enhance their use of photography in teaching about the Holocaust and related subjects and was hosted in partnership with the Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London.

On Thursday 11 June 2020, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer presented their new book, School Photos in Liquid Time. This new book explores classroom photographs of schoolchildren and how they are pervasive, even in repressive historical and political contexts, such as that of Nazi-occupied Europe. Hirsch and Spitzer examine this genre of vernacular photography, from clandestine images of Jewish children isolated in Nazi ghettos and Japanese American children incarcerated in camps, to images of Native children removed to North American boarding schools.

The event also featured reflections and responses from Professor Griselda Pollock and Professor Eva Hoffman.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, in which over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered in the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War, simply because of their religious identity.

As an organisation which is one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and Nazi era, we believe we must ensure we never forget about the Bosnian genocide and reaffirm our commitment to standing up against all forms of hatred and prejudice that targets groups based on their religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or any type of difference.

The theme “Every Action Matters” seeks to encourage every person to reflect upon their own behaviour and choices that they make, and demonstrate, however insignificant it may seem, every action matters, whether positive or negative. It aims to show those who stand up and unite against hatred can make a difference. It sets out to dispel the notion that one person cannot make a difference and show the action of one individual does matter and they can achieve a great deal, however small their action may appear initially.

It is now more important than ever for us to come together as people in the UK, no matter what our background, to celebrate diversity and to stand together in solidarity against hatred and discrimination. We hope you will join us in mourning the loss of those who died at Srebrenica and reflecting on how we as individuals, groups and communities can come together to build a better future without hatred.