January 6th, 2021
This exhibition shows a small part of the collection of children's songbooks published by the Nazis that The Wiener Holocaust Library holds. Music was a key element of Nazi propaganda. Prominent, recurring themes were nature (often used metaphorically) and the military as well as classic children’s songs – songs that I still sang in school in the late 2000s.
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January 6th, 2021
In 1933, the German-Jewish photographer Gerty Simon fled Berlin to escape Nazi persecution. She travelled to Britain with her son Bernd’s (Bernard Simon, 1921-2015) school, which was relocated from Ulm to Kent in autumn 1933 by the headteacher, Anna Essinger, because of her opposition to Nazi policies. Part of the Berlin-London Exhibition.
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January 6th, 2021
Even though the British public were shocked by the actions of the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) in Germany and the nation stood together against national socialist Germany after the beginning of the Second World War, antisemitic stereotypes, conspiracy legacies and even anti-Jewish violence were common in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s.
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January 6th, 2021
This display includes a selection of material relating to Philip Manes, a German Jew and a prolific writer with a lifelong habit of keeping records of his experiences. He continued his cultural life in the Theresienstadt ghetto and camp, where he and his wife were sent in 1942, becoming an integral part of this community.
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January 6th, 2021
Among The Wiener Library’s unique holdings there are a collection of calendars dating from 1935 to 1950 which demonstrate the reach of Nazi Party ideology into the homes of ordinary German citizens. Throughout these calendars there is a strong militaristic association, coupled with an emphasis on children, sports and the importance of keeping oneself fit and healthy.
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January 6th, 2021
For many Holocaust survivors, the defeat of Nazi Germany did not bring instant freedom, nor did it necessarily bring happiness. The Red Cross, the Jewish Relief Unit, and other organisations did what they could in way of post-war relief and rehabilitation, but the bleak reality of the situation was that many survivors did not have homes, families or communities to go back to.
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January 6th, 2021
This exhibition was created by the Youth Champion Board from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, young people committed to learning lessons from the past to help create a safer, better future. The HMDT Youth Champions came into The Wiener Library on 6 and 7 November to research and prepare the exhibition using Wiener Library archive material. They selected the exhibition topic to chime in with the HMDT’s theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2018, which is ‘The Power of Words’.
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January 6th, 2021
Our new mini Reading Room exhibition, The Contributions of Jewish Refugees to British Life, illustrates the contribution to Britain made by Jewish refugees from Nazism and features unique materials from our collections.
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January 6th, 2021
The Malicious Gossip Law, passed in early 1934, meant that telling an anti-Nazi joke was a crime, the same year infamous anti-Nazi film Hitler’s Reign of Terror was debuted in New York. Despite censorship, culture remained, and this resistance included literature, art, storytelling, underground newspapers, and maintaining religious customs, as well as notably - theatre.
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January 6th, 2021
Our new mini Reading Room exhibition, created in order to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, tells the story of what British troops found when they liberated the camp on 15 April 1945 and how news of the camp was spread by the British media.
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