The Wiener Holocaust Library and Waging Peace
This Refugee Week, The Wiener Holocaust Library remembers its refugee origins and insists that all refugees must be treated with dignity and respect.
In recent years, The Wiener Holocaust Library and Waging Peace have collaborated to create an important archive of documents relating to genocide and human rights abuses in Sudan, partly created by refugees from Sudan. Since 2003, the conflict in the Darfur region in Sudan has claimed more than 300,000 lives. Mass murder, widespread sexual abuse and the destruction of people’s homes and land have led 2.5 million Dafuris to flee. Bombings and atrocities have also been perpetrated by the former regime of Omar al-Bashir against those living in the Nuba Mountains in the south of the country, and in other periphery areas. The recent revolution offered some grounds for hope in Sudan, but democratic advances are under threat after the military coup of October 2021.
Sudanese refugees fleeing these conflicts and abuses often seek refuge in Britain as a result of our shared colonial history with Sudan, and because of family and community ties.
The documents in the Library’s collections stand as testimony to the persecution and genocide of Europe’s Jews and Roma by the Nazis and their collaborators, as well those affected by more recent genocides and atrocities, such as that in Darfur.
The stories of those affected show us how essential it is that those fleeing persecution always have access to safe and legal routes to seek asylum, no matter what country or situation they are fleeing from. The Wiener Holocaust Library and Waging Peace unite to call upon the British government to uphold the right of all refugees to have access to a fair process for claiming asylum and treat all those claiming refuge with dignity and respect.
