Wiener Library for the Study of the Nazi Era and the Holocaust | |
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32°06′54″N34°48′17″E / 32.114990511322254°N 34.8047749551364°E | |
Location | Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel |
Type | Research library |
Other information | |
Affiliation | Tel Aviv University |
Website | https://cenlib.tau.ac.il/wiener |
The Wiener Library is a research library at Tel Aviv University which focuses on the Nazi era and the Holocaust. In addition to research books, the Library also holds the Wiener Archival Collection, consisting of thousands of documents on the Nazi era and the fate of European Jewry. The Library operates as part of the Sourasky Central Library.
The Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO), which became known after the war as the Wiener Library, was founded in Amsterdam in 1933 by Dr. Alfred Wiener, [1] an active member of the "Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith" (Centralverein) who left Germany when the Nazis rose to power, and Prof. David Cohen, an Ancient History professor at the University of Amsterdam and a prominent member of the local Jewish community.
The establishment of the JCIO was based in an idea from the late 1920s of German Jewish activists to collect information about the Nazi party, as part of the struggle to prevent the strengthening of the party. In a similar manner, the Amsterdam center aimed to draw world attention towards the dangers of Nazi Anti-Semitism, and the worsening of anti-Jewish policies in 1930s Europe. [2] In 1939 Dr. Wiener transferred the collection to London. [1] Throughout the war years he and his assistants continued to collect information and documents regarding the German occupation policy, responses to it, and particularly on the fate of European Jewry. When the war ended, Holocaust survivors' testimonies as well as information regarding the fate of Jewish refugees were collected. [3] Up until his death in 1964, Dr. Wiener and his team continued to focus on expanding the collection. [4]
In the late 1970s the Wiener Library in London and Tel Aviv University agreed to transfer the entire collection to the university. Following the transfer in 1980, the university's leading historians decided to establish the Wiener Library as a research library affiliated to the Sourasky Central Library. [5] Copies of the original documents can be found on Microfilm at the Wiener Library in London. [3]
The Library's collection has expanded considerably over the past three decades. It now contains: archival material and online databases of primary sources; research books; pamphlets and periodicals; as well as literature of nationalist, anti-Semitic and national-socialist origins. It includes such items as: various editions of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", German and European newspapers of the Nazi period, extreme-right pamphlets, anti-Semitic and fascist movements and Holocaust denial literature.
The archive consists of thousands of documents from Europe in the Interwar period the Nazi era, concerning mostly the Holocaust, and the fate of Jewish communities and refugees in the post-war era. [5] The archive includes such items as: documents from the Bern Trial, documentation of German Jewry in the 1930s, documentation of Nazi bureaucracy, survivors' and refugees' testimonies and documents from the Nuremberg trials. [1]
The Wiener Library closely collaborates with research institutes at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Humanities. As a research library it organizes a wide range of academic activities in order to promote interest in and research of subjects relating to the Nazi era and the Holocaust, amongst which are: lecture series, academic conferences, research workshops and exhibitions. [6]
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress' main purpose is to act as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people". Membership in the WJC is open to all representative Jewish groups or communities, irrespective of the social, political or economic ideology of the community's host country. The World Jewish Congress headquarters are in New York City, and the organization maintains international offices in Brussels, Belgium; Jerusalem; Paris, France; Moscow, Russia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Geneva, Switzerland. The WJC has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
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David Cesarani was a British historian who specialised in Jewish history, especially the Holocaust. He also wrote several biographies, including Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (1998).
The Wiener Holocaust Library is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. Founded in 1933 as an information bureau that informed Jewish communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazis, it was transformed into a research institute and public access library after the end of World War II and is situated in Russell Square, London.
Alfred Wiener was a German Jew who dedicated much of his life to documenting antisemitism and racism in Germany and Europe, and uncovering crimes of Germany's Nazi government. He is best remembered as the founder and long-time director of the Wiener Library.
The Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens was founded by German Jewish intellectuals on 26 March 1893 in Berlin, with the intention of opposing the rise of antisemitism in the German Empire. Shortly after its founding it had 1,420, and in 1926 approximately 60,000 members.
The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism is a research institute at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
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Jeffrey C. Herf is an American historian of modern Europe, particularly modern Germany. He is Distinguished University Professor of modern European at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Robert Solomon Wistrich was the Erich Neuberger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the head of the university's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Wistrich considered antisemitism "the longest hatred" and viewed Anti-Zionism as its latest incarnation. According to Scott Ury, "More than any other scholar, Wistrich has helped integrate traditional Zionist interpretations of Jewish history, society, and fate into the study of antisemitism." Other researchers have reproduced much of his work without questioning its founding assumptions.
Ben Barkow, is a writer and was the director of the Wiener Holocaust Library from 1998 to 2019.
Dina Porat is an Israeli historian. She is professor emeritus of modern Jewish history at the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University and the chief historian of Yad Vashem.
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Steven B. Bowman is an American scholar and academic particularly known for his research of Greek and Jewish relations throughout the past three millennia, with emphasis on Byzantine and Holocaust periods. He is a professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches a wide range of courses in ancient and medieval Judaic Studies and modern Israel.
The Holocaust in the Netherlands was organized by Nazi Germany in occupied Netherlands as part of the Holocaust across Europe during the Second World War. In 1939, there were some 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 24,000 to 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled from Germany in the 1930s. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust. The 1947 census reported 14,346 Jews, or 10% of the pre-war population. This further decrease is attributed to massive emigration of Jews to the then British Mandate of Palestine.
The Committee for Jewish Refugees was a Dutch charitable organization that operated from 1933 to 1941. At first, it managed the thousands of Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany. These refugees were crossing the border from Germany into the Netherlands. The committee largely decided which of the refugees could remain in the Netherlands. The others generally returned to Germany. For the refugees permitted to stay, it provided support in several ways. These included direct financial aid and assistance with employment and with further emigration.
Maurice Frankenhuis was a Jewish Dutch businessman, historian, researcher, author, collector, numismatist, Holocaust survivor, and philanthropist. He documented the history of World War I and World War II through his family's experiences in the Netherlands and subsequent internment in two concentration camps. Throughout the ordeal he built a collection of memorabilia and authored a firsthand account to the Holocaust of Dutch Jewry. He dedicated himself to educating about the Holocaust, and preserve a record of history for future generations including donations of his collections of medals and posters to various museums around the world, and writing his personal memoirs, observations and commentary on world affairs after the war.
Roni Stauber is an Israeli historian. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. Stauber serves as the Director of the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center and the Director of the university's Diploma Program in Archival and Information Science. Stauber is also a member of the academic committee of Yad Vashem. His research focuses on various aspects of Holocaust memory and the formation of Holocaust consciousness in Israel and around the world. In particular, he examines the interrelations between ideology and politics, and between collective memory and historiography, with a focus on Israeli-German relations.