2026-05-29T21:53:50Z https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/oai

oai:gjd:source-17.en 2026-03-15T00:00:00Z

en The Wiener Library’s Eyewitness Accounts Collection https://diaspora.jewish-history-online.net/source/gjd:source-17 Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies Online Ressource In the mid-1950s, the Wiener Library (now The Wiener Holocaust Library, WHL) in London began an ambitious project to collect written eyewitness accounts from survivors of Nazi persecution and the Shoah. The initiative was led by the German-Jewish refugee scholar, Dr. Eva Reichmann (1897–1998), the Library’s first Director of Research. Supported by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference), the project began in London, from where Reichmann directed a small team of paid staff members and additional volunteers. Interviewers were located throughout Europe and were employed to trace, contact, and persuade potential interviewees to take part. The project continued until the mid-1960s, proceeding in a concentric and centrifugal direction: they began close to London using their network of professional and cultural contacts within German-Jewish circles, and gradually spun out further and further as the network of interviewers and interviewees widened and diversified. The resulting collection consists of some 1,300 reports (including letters, poems, songs, and other written materials predominantly recorded in or translated from German), many of which have formed the basis of a digital resource created by WHL: Testifying to the Truth (testifyingtothetruth.co.uk). The digital resource includes the history and original classification system of the collection, and provides possibilities for searching the collection in new ways. The project illustrates the reach and impact of transnational networks of German Jews rekindled after the Shoah, and the methodology employed by the project organizers exemplifies the efforts of German-Jewish refugees in shaping Holocaust memory. Therefore, the Library as an institution, still in operation today, stands as a testament to the documentation efforts of the German-Jewish diaspora in England and beyond. 2026-03-15