The Wiener Holocaust Library

16/10/2026

Don't miss our latest exhibition, closing 30th October.

15/10/2026

This map was part of a secret N**i report detailing the mass murder of Jews carried out by the SS Einsatzgruppe A.

The Einsatzgruppen (Task Forces) were SS death squads who followed the German Army after their invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, orchestrating and committing mass murders of the N**is’ ‘racial’ and ideological enemies: Jews, Roma and Communists.

Some of the murders that occurred in Soviet territories were perpetrated not by the SS but by local collaborators and local militia groups.

The map indicates the number of Jews murdered by Einsatzgruppe A in Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus: numbers are recorded beside coffins for each territory.

The Wiener Library assisted the Nuremberg Trials in their work, and afterwards was given a copy of some of these documents, including this one.

📸 ‘Jewish Executions Carried Out by Einsatzgruppe A’, part of the Stahlecker Report, 15 October 1941

15/10/2026

Inheritance is the story of two very different German-Jewish famili...

15/10/2026

14/10/2026

On 14 October 1943, an armed uprising at Sobibór took place and hundreds of prisoners were able to escape.

The revolt was planned after rumours spread that Sobibór was due to be closed down and dismantled, and all of those who still worked at the site would be murdered. In response to these rumours, a small group of Polish prisoners in the camp formed a resistance group and began planning an armed uprising, so that they could escape before being killed.

The uprising began at 4pm when Johann Niemann, the acting commandant, was killed after being lured into the tailors’ workshop in Camp I. Over the following hour the prisoners managed to kill nine other SS officers.

At around 5pm, the daily roll call began and other SS staff members became aware that something unexpected was happening. The SS opened fire and began shooting at the prisoners who had gathered for the roll call. In response, some prisoners returned fire at the SS, while others in the camp began to make their escape on foot. To do so, they had to cross the minefields which surrounded the camp, some of which were triggered and began exploding. Chaos reigned, and many prisoners were shot by guards or fatally wounded by the mines as they tried to escape.

In total, approximately three hundred prisoners were able to escape during the uprising. In the hours and days following, N**i SS officers searched extensively for those who had escaped, and managed to re-capture and then kill around one hundred people. Of the remaining two hundred escapees, approximately fifty survived until the end of the Second World War. Along with a handful of others, these escapees were among the only survivors of Sobibór.

On 15 October, all remaining prisoners in Sobibór who were unable to escape were murdered.

13/10/2026

Our final N**i Slave Labour exhibition event takes place next week!

🏛️ Exhibition Talk: Perpetrator & Victim, by Photographer Mike Stone
🗓️ 22 October, 6:30 - 8pm
📍 at The Wiener Holocaust Library, Bloomsbury

In his photo series, Perpetrator & Victim, documentary photographer Mike Stone confronts the uneasy entanglement between the machinery of N**i persecution and the materials still embedded in contemporary image-making.

Working with a 1938 Leica camera produced in Germany and period lenses whose industrial lineage runs through the N**i-era, he uses cameras, film, chemistry, and paper deliberately drawn from that history to make portraits of survivors of N**i persecution.

This event offers a rare opportunity not only to hear the stories behind the work, but to handle a working portfolio of prints that brings the material history of the images into the room, including survivor portraits never previously exhibited.

12/10/2026

❗Exhibition closing on 30 October!

Our latest exhibition draws on the unique collections of the Wiener Holocaust Library to explore how perpetrators such as the SS, the chemical company I.G. Farben and weapons manufacturer Krupp profited off and exploited slave labourers.

It examines the stories of the many victims of slave labour: from the experiences of Jewish labourers in Auschwitz subcamps dying from chemical poisoning; to prisoners of war being starved to death while forced to build N**i Atlantic defences in the Channel Islands.

Through clandestine photographs of forced labourers at work, eyewitness testimonies, and the official files of culpable companies, visitors will gain insight into the experiences of the victims, and trace how industries and companies became complicit in their exploitation.

📍 Only on display until 30 October 2026
📆 Open Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm
🗝️ Free entry

12/10/2026

"If we go to Poland, we can be confident life will end because I have no hope ever again healthily or living to survive life there."

During the N**i era the Holocaust was not yet known by this term, so how did Jews describe their persecution? From letters written during this time we can see correspondents used their own words, or no words at all. Euphemisms often helped express a reality for which many correspondents had no words.

Poland is a key word in the letters from 1942. People commented regularly on the waves of deportations leaving for the east and the lack of communication from the deportees. Even though they did not know the details of the genocide under way, they inferred that ‘going to Poland’ was synonymous with death.

Gertrud Hammerstein wrote to her daughter and son-in-law on 12 October 1942 and described the ghastly atmosphere in berlin at the time, when Jews had to face their impending deportations.

09/10/2026

📣 In case you missed it!

We've uploaded this week's talk with Charlie Scheidt and Kat Rohrer to our YouTube channel. Their new book, Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust, is the story of two very different German-Jewish families, uprooted by the Holocaust and war, scattered across two continents, and re-formed in America.

It is the story of how a person sets about rebuilding a family history after an unspeakable trauma and ends up building community.

Watch now:

Inheritance is the story of two very different German-Jewish famili...