For immediate release, 27.04.2023
This year, the library that was created by a German Jew who predicted the horrors of the Holocaust is marking its 90th anniversary. The Wiener Holocaust Library was established in Amsterdam in 1934, helped the Allies during the Second World War and continues to collect and preserve evidence of the crimes of genocide today.
The Library’s eponymous founder, Dr Alfred Wiener, saw the danger inherent in the rise of the Nazis and predicted remarkably accurately what could emerge from growing antisemitism. He was among the first people in Europe to sound the alarm.
During the Second World War, Wiener and his colleagues relayed secret intelligence about the scale and brutality of the crimes of the Third Reich to the British government to support the Allied war effort. The evidence they had amassed by 1945 was used by the prosecution to bring leading perpetrators to justice at the Nuremberg trials, and the work to collect, preserve and share this evidence continues in London in 2023.
The Wiener Holocaust Library is now the world’s oldest continuously functioning archive and library documenting Nazi crimes, and the largest collection of Holocaust-related material in the UK, including thousands of documents donated by Holocaust survivors and their families. The work to preserve this important evidence, build the collection, and make it accessible to all who wish to learn is an ongoing task.
From now until February 2024, we will take a look back through the Library’s history decade by decade. We’re celebrating remarkable work by extraordinary individuals connected to the Library, staging two concurrent exhibitions detailing the history of the Wiener family and displaying some of our most valuable and never-before-displayed collection items.
‘The Wiener Library is a unique institution whose depth of knowledge, range of archival material and understanding of the different aspects of Nazism and the Holocaust is unmatched across the 90 years of its existence. Its work now is as valuable and necessary as ever.’
Dr Dave Rich, Author and Director of Policy, CST
For more information contact: Samantha Dulieu, Press & Communications Manager E: [email protected] T: 0207636 7247
