The exhibition commemorates the life and work of some of these pioneers of Holocaust research. Among others, the stories are told of: Emmanuel Ringelblum and Rachel Auerbach, whose Oyneg Shabbos organisation gathered and concealed evidence from inside the Warsaw Ghetto; Raphael Lemkin, who used the information he amassed about the atrocities of the Holocaust to develop the legal concept of genocide; Vasily Grossman, who documented the extermination of Soviet Jews; Filip Müller, who collected evidence of the Nazi crimes being committed whilst imprisoned in Auschwitz; Alfred Wiener, founder of The Wiener Library, who collected and disseminated evidence of Nazi activities from the mid-1920s onwards, as well as the Library’s Eva Reichmann, who launched one of the earliest projects to collect eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust.
For the ‘first generation’ of Holocaust researchers, their efforts were particularly urgent in the face of Nazi efforts to eradicate all traces of Jewish existence from Europe. Under the most adverse conditions and often against indifference, denunciation and violence, they shaped the foundations of our current knowledge of the Holocaust. Today, institutions such as The Wiener Library extend this legacy by continuing to collect and preserve vital evidence and testimonies. This temporary exhibition will offer visitors the unique opportunity to view original documents from the Library’s extensive archive collection, including some of the earliest eye-witness testimonies from Holocaust survivors ever to be recorded.
To find out more about the exhibition, visit: https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/crimes-uncovered
Crimes Uncovered: The First Generation of Holocaust Researchers will be on show from 27 February 2019 – 17 May 2019.
This exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Touro College Berlin, and with the generous support of The Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.
AJR Information, London, November 1954, featuring Eva Reichmann's appeal, Wiener Library Collections
Eva Reichmann c.1950s, who launched one of the earliest projects to collect eye-witness testimonies to the Holocaust, Wiener Library Collections