Excavation-Confrontation-Repair? Family Histories of the Holocaust

The Wiener Holocaust Library is pleased to announce a new events series that will explore the meaning and legacy of family research into the Holocaust as well as offer practical advice to those embarking on their own research for the first time.

The Library offers a dedicated service to support Holocaust survivors and the descendants and relatives of Holocaust victims and survivors in conducting research on their families’ pasts. Our enquiries have ranged from survivors seeking documentation to support compensation and insurance claims, to those who have lived with only the outline of their family members’ experiences. Others have sought connections with living relatives and descendants in an attempt to repair the destruction of family ties by the Nazis and their allies during the Holocaust.

Since 2013, the Library has been the only point of access in the United Kingdom to the digital archive of the International Tracing Service (now Arolsen Archives), a collection of 30 million documents on over 17 million people whose lives were impacted by the events of the Second World War.

This free series will be led by The Wiener Holocaust Library’s Senior ITS Archive Researchers, who have expertise in helping family researchers interpret archives they find, and in connecting them with other institutions and organisations that can aid in their search. In partnership with Jewish genealogists and other archives and libraries, the series will explore the ethics of family research and the experience of diaspora and recovery often brought to the surface in the process of research.

Excavation-Confrontation-Repair? Family Histories of the Holocaust upcoming events:

Exhibition Talk: Write at once and in detail: The re-creation of Mimi and her family, with Marion McAlpine, 16 May 6:30 – 8pm

Watch past events: