Our volunteers are vital to our success as an institution. Undertaking translation, document numbering, conservation, and delivering guided tours, they form a valuable part of our operation.
This Volunteers Week we’re delighted to share a selection of testimonials from our current volunteers, describing the important work they undertake and what it means to them to be a part of the Library team.
Alan, Collections Volunteer
It’s with trepidation but also a sense of some excitement when making a start, never knowing beforehand what I will find in a donation. The first task of sorting is to arrange material, often mostly correspondence, into chronological order. This might comprise family letters and postcards, business letters and documents, ID documents, educational certificates as well as those of birth, death and marriage; these may date back to the late 1800s and be very fragile, so require careful handling.
It’s been a privilege to see and hold fascinating and often invaluable historical documents and objects as well as a great opportunity to do historical research at the ‘coal-face’ so to speak, to help make sure that the documentation of the past is retained and that the facts and the truth are preserved for future generations. An added bonus is that, because of space limitations, I am able to work in the lovely Reading Room overlooking Russell Square surrounded by the Library’s collection!
Des, Translation Volunteer
I have worked for the Wiener Holocaust Library as a translator (translating German into English) since 2016. The focus of my work has been the translation of eyewitness statements from Holocaust survivors, but I have also transcribed and translated countless letters written, mainly by Jewish parents trapped in Europe, to their children in England.
I have been sustained in my work, even when the account contained some of the most harrowing descriptions imaginable. To conclude, it has been a privilege for me to be involved in the work done by the Wiener Holocaust Library.
Terry, Tour Guide
I started to volunteer as the subject has always interested me and I wanted to do something “useful”. Experience, after several years, has increased my understanding of the Holocaust (and of the library’s vital role) and allowed me to think that I may have helped increased the understanding of our visitors. That said, I have found many visitors knowledgeable, often with stories to tell about family experiences. Working for the library, whose staff I have always found friendly and helpful, has been both enlightening and, at times, humbling.
Margaret, Translation Volunteer
For most of my life I have lived and worked in Redbridge, East London, a suburb with residents from many ethnicities and still today an area with many Jewish families but we were a slightly different family. My mum was Dutch Lutheran from a small village in Friesland and my dad was from a Catholic farming family from Central Lithuania. Both had arrived in the UK after the war.
Whilst I have lived nearly all my life in the UK I still feel very European. I am fascinated by the way cultures merge and diverge, how borders shift, how languages, customs and recipes are shared. My parents talked about the war when I was growing up and the stories I heard were not ones about the Blitz or rationing. “They just don’t know what it was like to be occupied,” my mum used to say. There were sad, sad stories and some strange, funny ones too, stories which I have passed on to my children because the war wasn’t just about battles and bombs but about ordinary, little people and the difficult choices they had to make.
This is what I find so fascinating about the pieces I translate for the Wiener Holocaust Library. I am continually amazed at the resilience and the ingenuity of those who were determined to live. I am humbled when I read of their gratitude to those who helped them and I have the greatest admiration for all of them, the survivors and those who knew they would not survive, and their amazing capacity to come to terms with what they have lost. We can all learn from them.
Find out more about volunteering opportunities here.
