The Wiener Holocaust Library

24/11/2024

On this day in 1894, the composer Bob Hanf was born in Amsterdam. He was born to parents of German-Jewish descent, and grew up in an affluent, artistic environment. His mother was an accomplished pianist.

He became a versatile artist: drawing, painting, writing, playing the violin and composing. Today the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam owns and displays several of his works.

Hanf performed as violinist in professional orchestras, but decided to focus on composing music. He wrote works for violin, some string quartets, songs on texts by Rilke, Kafka, Morgenstern and Goethe, orchestral works and one opera.

In 1941 both Hanf and composer Robert de Roos were awarded the Music Prize from the city of Amsterdam.

While in hiding in Amsterdam during the German occupation, Hanf wrote, under the pseudonym Christiaan Philippus, a poem ‘Mijmeringen over de nachtzijde des levens’ (Thoughts on the Dark Side of Life). This was his only work published after the war.

On April 23, 1944, Hanf was arrested in a raid by the SS and deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on September 30, 1944. His compositions remained largely shelved after the war, only being performed again in the 1990s.

The Reawakening Suppressed Music project aims to record and actively disseminate suppressed orchestral music of the Holocaust from Jewish composers that were persecuted by the N**is.

The project has just released the first recording made of the Andante from Bob Hanf’s Serenade for Orchestra, recorded by Shelley Katz using the Symphonova.

Listen now via YouTube: https://buff.ly/3zNUlbo Leo Smit Stichting

23/11/2024

Join us on Monday for an online talk with Dr Dave Rich Community Security Trust (CST) : Antisemitism and the Holocaust since October 7th

He will explore how antisemitism links to interpretations and understanding of the Holocaust, and how that has changed since October 7th 2023

23/11/2024

📆 Save the date!

The Big Give Christmas Challenge fundraising campaign goes live on the 3 December.

This year we’re raising money to support the crucial work of our Family Research Service.

We hold the UK’s only copy of the International Tracing Service Archive: 30 million pages of Holocaust-era records, used for family research for survivors and victim families. We never charge for this work and need your support to help families learn, often for the first time, the fate of lost loved ones

By donating during the Big Give you will help us to reconfigure our team to allow our researchers to work effectively, and respond quickly to new enquiries. This will support us to help as many families as possible uncover their relatives’ fate.

To be reminded when the campaign goes live, email [email protected] with the subject 'Big Give Save the Date' https://buff.ly/493IUcL

22/11/2024

📢 In case you missed it!

Our 2024 Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial Lecture was delivered this week by Professor Debórah Dwork. Her talk, Saints and Liars: The untold stories of Americans who saved endangered people from the N**is, is available to watch now:

This is a live-stream of the lecture. An edited version of the lecture will be uploaded in due course.Have a Question? No Registration Requiredhttps://app.sl...

21/11/2024

12/11/2024

📣 Free public lecture!

When the Nineteenth Century Ended for Jews: The Elderly and the Holocaust

Next month we're pleased to invite participation in the public keynote lecture for our closed doctoral workshop, Older People and the Holocaust.

Professor Dan Stone will analyse key themes on the understudied topic of the elderly and the Holocaust, which will be explored in the workshop as well as in a forthcoming volume, Older Jews and the Holocaust. Participants are welcome to join the lecture online or in person.

Starting with the assertion by Polish historian Michał Głowiński that the nineteenth century ended for Jews with the death camps, this talk examines the murder of the elderly during the Holocaust and postwar care for the few elderly survivors.

The lecture will discuss how the brutal treatment of the elderly exemplifies N**i ideology’s attack on the Jews per se, since their attitude to the weakest in society goes to the heart of what N**ism was all about. The murder of the elderly signified an overturning of nineteenth-century notions of “progress” and freedom before the law.

Sign up now;

11/11/2024

A new exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum, Peoples Unite! How Southall changed the country, launched this week and features an important pamphlet from our collection.

This National Front Pamphlet was distributed in Leicester, and features some of their extreme policies. It is included in the 'Cycle of Hate' section of the exhibition.

The exhibition charts Southall’s impact as one of the first towns in the UK to be home to communities from former colonies. The curators say ‘its diversity and energy has made it symbolic of racists’ worst fears and an inspiration for the fight against hate.’

Find out more: https://buff.ly/4hngUEL

11/11/2024

How did artwork from a POW camp in Siberia make it to our archive in London?

The curator of our current exhibition, Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, explains....

The Exhibition is on display in London until February 2025.

https://buff.ly/4hANcMy

09/11/2024

These images from our extensive photograph collection show the violence and aftermath of the November Pogrom, known as Kristallnacht, which took place in 1938.

The name refers to the broken glass lining the streets after the pogroms.

Antisemitic laws and decrees had been increasing from the time that the N**is rose to power. Kristallnacht marked a dramatic escalation in the N**i’s treatment of Jews.

📷 Mother and child passing by destroyed Jewish-owned textile shop
📷 A young man sweeps glass off the streets in the aftermath of Kristallnacht
📷 Passers-by in front of a destroyed Jewish-owned shop
📷 Firefighters and SS men in front of the burning synagogue of Baden-Baden

Find out more: https://buff.ly/2oPlaaI

08/11/2024

📢 New exhibition event!

Join us this month for a talk exploring Fred Kormis' memorial to prisoners of war and victims of concentration camps.

It will put Kormis's work in the long, complex, and ongoing histories of Holocaust memorialisation in the UK.

Sign up for your ticket now:

08/11/2024

📚 On sale now!

Drawing on the Fred Kormis Collection held in our archive, our latest catalogue accompanies our groundbreaking new exhibition. It contains personal reflections and expert assessments of the sculptor's extraordinary life, work and legacy.

Shop now:

Fred (Fritz) Kormis was born at the end of the nineteenth century to a Jewish family in Frankfurt-am-Main. At 14 he was apprenticed to a sculpture and moulding workshop, studying art in the evening at Frankfurt Polytechnic. It was to be the calm before the storm. Fred Kormis' life and work were shap...

07/11/2024

🎥 The latest series of BBC Two A House Through Time features insight from our Director of Research, Dr Christine Schmidt, who was interviewed by David Olusoga for this fascinating four-part special!

The series examines the stories behind two apartment blocks, one in London and one in Berlin, including the fates of Jewish residents persecuted by the N**is.

Watch the full series now:

A young poet takes to the skies as bombs rain down on London. In Berlin, one family attempts to flee the country as the persecution of Jewish people intensifies.

06/11/2024

Join us next week for a special evening book launch event for Prof Anthony McElligott’s new book, The Last Transport: The Holocaust in the Eastern Aegean.

The deportation of 1,755 Jews from the islands of Rhodes and Cos in July 1944, shortly after the last deportation from Hungary, was the last transport to leave Greece for Auschwitz and brought to a close the last significant phase of the genocide of Europe’s Jews (notwithstanding the death marches). Within six weeks of their deportation, the Germans were retreating from Greece and the Balkans as Hitler’s empire shrank.

This last deportation is frequently acknowledged in Holocaust literature but its significance for our understanding of the N**i genocide of the Jews remains largely overlooked.

The event will be chaired by Sir Richard J Evans, will include a short musical performance by Francesca Ter-Berg, and a panel discussion with Dr Paris Chronakis and Dr Bea Lewkowicz.

Sign up now:

06/11/2024

Later this month our International Tracing Service Archive team are at Manx National Heritage for a free one-day programme and exhibition exploring efforts made after the Holocaust to find the missing, and connections made to the Jewish refugees held as internees on the Island.

We welcome archivists, historians, students, family historians, heritage practitioners, and anyone interested in Jewish and Holocaust history and its aftermath.

Sign up to attend now:

05/11/2024

📢 New online event!

Join us this month for an online talk from Dr Dave Rich, Director of Policy at
Community Security Trust (CST) exploring how antisemitism links to interpretations and understanding of the Holocaust, and how that has changed since October 7th 2023

Sign up now:

05/11/2024

📢 Don't miss next week's Curators' Talk!

It will explore the genesis and development of the exhibition, from the deposit of the Fred Kormis Collection at the Library shortly after his death, to its rediscovery by Library staff

Sign up now:

04/11/2024

Have you explored our new-look online exhibitions?

Discover some of the most significant objects from our archive, from documents dating from the Dreyfus Affair, to Holocaust-era family letters, and hidden anti-N**i writings from the 1930s

Explore now:

Online exhibitions from the Wiener Holocaust Library Highlights from the Archives In 1933 in Amsterdam, German-Jewish exile Alfred Wiener established The Wiener Holocaust Library’s predecessor organisation, the Jewish Central Information Office. It monitored N**i Germany and gathered intelligence ...

04/11/2024

📢 New Call for Papers!

The 8th Beyond Camps & Forced Labour Conference, taking place in January 2026, is now accepting applications.

Beyond Camps & Forced Labour is a multi-disciplinary conference organised by: Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, University of London; Imperial War Museum Institute; Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London; The Wiener Holocaust Library, London; University of Wolverhampton; the Fortunoff Video Archive; the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute; the Leo Baeck Institute London; and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History.

The aim is to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines who are engaged in research on all groups of survivors of N**i persecution. These will include – but are not limited to – Jews, Roma and Sinti, Slavonic peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGBTQIA+, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, members of underground movements, people with disabilities, the so-called ‘racially impure’, and forced labourers.

The Eighth international multidisciplinary conference is to be held at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library, London from 7-9 January 2026.

Find out more: