Country United Kingdom Phone +44 20 7636 7247 Founded 1933 | Access requirements Open to anyone Director Ben Barkow (director) London borough City of Westminster | |
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Established 1933 (84 years ago) (1933) Location 29 Russell Square
London, WC1B Items collected Books, pamphlets, serials, photographs, family papers, films & documentaries Size 65,000 books and pamphlets
2,000 document collections
17,000 photographs
3,000 titles of periodicals Address 29 Russell Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 5DP, UK Hours Closed today SundayClosedMonday10AM–5PMTuesday10AM–7:30PMWednesday10AM–5PMThursday10AM–5PMFriday10AM–5PMSaturdayClosedSuggest an edit Similar Jewish Museum London, Russell Square, The Principal London, Foundling Museum, Beth Shalom Holocaus Profiles | ||
The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide ( [ˈviːnɐ ]); is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. Founded in 1933 as an information bureau that informed Jewish communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazis, it was transformed into a research institute and public access library after the end of World War II and is now situated in Russell Square, London.
Contents
History
Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who worked for the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith), a Jewish civil rights group, spent years documenting the rise of antisemitism. He collected books, photographs, letters, magazines and other materials, including school primers and children's games, recording the spread of Nazi propaganda and its racist doctrines.
In 1933, Wiener fled Germany for Amsterdam, where he operated the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO). Dr. David Cohen became its president. Cohen was a prominent Dutch Jew who founded the Committee for Jewish Refugees at the same time; the Committee used the work of the JCIO for its publications, and provided some financial support to the JCIO.
After Kristallnacht in November 1938, Wiener and the JCIO archives moved to Britain. The collection opened in London on 1 September 1939, the day of the Nazi invasion of Poland. In London, the Jewish Central Information Office functioned as a private intelligence service. Wiener was paid by the British government to keep Britain informed of developments in Germany.
After the end of World War II, the library used its extensive collections on National Socialism and the Third Reich to provide material to the United Nations War Crimes Commission and bringing war criminals to justice.
The Library published a bi-monthly bulletin commencing in November 1946 (and which continued until 1983). Another important task during the 1950s and 1960s was the gathering of eyewitness accounts, a resource that was to become a unique and important part of the Library's collection. The accounts were collected systematically by a team of interviewers. In 1964, the Institute of Contemporary History was established and took up the neglected field of modern European history within The Wiener Library.
During a funding crisis in 1974 it was decided to move a part of the collection to Tel Aviv. In the course of the preparations for this move, a large part of the collections was microfilmed for conservation purposes. The plans to move the library were abandoned in 1980 after the transports had already begun, resulting in a separate Wiener Library within the library of the University of Tel Aviv that consisted of the majority of the book stock, while The Wiener Library in London retained the microfilmed copies.
Today The Wiener Library is a research library dedicated to studying the Holocaust, comparative genocide studies, Nazi Germany, and German Jewry, and documenting Antisemitism and Neonazism. It is a registered charity under English law.
The Fraenkel Prize
The Library also awards the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. This prize, founded by the late Ernst Fraenkel OBE (former Chairman and Joint Library President), is awarded annually for "outstanding work of twentieth-century history in one of The Wiener Library's fields of interest." These areas of interest include the following: "The History of Europe, Jewish History, The Two World Wars, Antisemitism, Comparative Genocide, Political Extremism."