H-DIARIES BLOG
The H-Diaries Blog shows our research activities. How we do research at archival centers, our contributions at conferences and many more activities.
Two Research Stays at the Wiener Holocaust Library Archives
January: Understanding the Archival System
A key archival center for research on the Holocaust, the Wiener Holocaust Library in London houses exceptionally
rich collections, notably composed of donations from Jewish families from Germany and Austria, some of whose members
emigrated to Great Britain.
Sarah Gruszka and Marie Moutier-Bitan carried out an initial research stay at the WHL in January 2026. Meetings with
members of the institution’s staff made it possible to understand the history of the site and the gradual development
of its collections over the decades. It was essential to grasp how donations of personal documents were classified
and made accessible to the public. Alan Freundlich, a retired volunteer, offered a tour of the basement storage areas
where the archives are kept. He also shared the motivations that led him to deposit his own family papers in this institution.
An initial survey of the collections was conducted in preparation for the subsequent stay. The aim was to identify diaries written under conditions of persecution, excluding those written exclusively in exile.
The online catalogue yields 330 results for the keyword “diary.” After an initial process of filtering the online catalogue, 91 Holocaust diaries were selected—approximately one third, a ratio also encountered in other archival centers.
April: Survey of Diaries and Specific Features of the WHL Collections
Returning to the WHL in April 2026, Sarah Gruszka and Marie Moutier-Bitan consulted the 91 diaries identified during the
initial filtering process. Approximately 40 were excluded upon closer examination. The collections are highly uneven:
some consist of only a few pages, while others comprise multiple notebooks kept over a long period. In total, 28 diarists
were identified, and 56 notebooks were incorporated into the inventory for the H-Diaries database.
Many diaries were first written in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and then continued in exile in Great Britain or elsewhere.
These trajectories are reflected in the form of the diary: changes of language, occasional interruptions in writing,
and new forms of address to relatives. Here again, information concerning the family context is essential for understanding
both the conditions in which the diary was produced and its subsequent mobility. Discussions with the chief archivist,
Howard Falksohn, shed light on the processes by which documents have been received and how these have evolved over
the past thirty years. Many notebooks function as appointment books, listing numerous names that are extremely difficult
to connect to the diarist; additional documents—such as postwar testimonies, correspondence, memoirs, or the metadata
collected by Howard Falksohn—thus provide indispensable keys to interpretation.
The research trip was founded by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.
More archival research