“We are leaving Theresienstadt. 5000 men are crowded together in the train. Bauschowitz sinks behind them. The dream of being able to stay together with the family is over. They are going, everyone feels, into the unknown. Squeezed in between rucksacks, suitcases and all sorts of luggage, they begin the recurring debate: where to?”

This is how Holocaust survivor Otto Kalwo described his experience with deportation from the Terezín Ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately after his liberation. He submitted his testimony within the framework of the so-called “Documentation Campaign” in Prague (Dokumentační akce), one of the earliest postwar projects to document the events of the Shoah, collecting evidence, documents, and witness testimonies. Most protocols were compiled in 1945 and 1946 in either Czech or German language.

Dear readers,

2023 turned out to be a busy, at times challenging, but ultimately successful year for EHRI. Thanks to the continued dedication and hard work of the whole consortium, we reached several important milestones.

The good progress is all the more remarkable given that the consortium had to operate in difficult circumstances. The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza have been difficult to absorb. They have had and continue to have, a devastating impact on the lives of colleagues working in Israel. Our Ukrainian partner – the Centre for Urban History in Lviv – still finds itself in a situation of war launched by Russia’s armed forces. Yet the Israeli and Ukrainian role in EHRI has not lessened. May the resilience and resourcefulness of all EHRI colleagues who are directly affected by war and conflict, and their continued dedication to EHRI, inspire us all.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) Archives is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for its 2024 fellowship program. In 2024, three to six fellowships will be awarded to senior scholars, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and independent researchers to conduct research in the JDC Archives.

Proximities & Gaze

October 28 - November 3, 2024 | Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands | Organized in partnership with the Department of Political History at Utrecht University and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Leicester | Deadline for applications: 25 January 2024

Hands-on Workshop CLARIN & EHRI | Call for applicants

March 27-28, 2024 | Location: Prague, Czech Republic | Deadline: 15 January 2024

Language is central to the study of the Holocaust. The documentation of the genocide of Jews and Roma, building on war-time clandestine efforts, has grown since the liberation and today includes large corpora of testimonies, trial proceedings, letters and diaries, government documents, files of aid organisations and much more.

On 11-12 December 2023, the second EHRI-AT Conference will take place at the University of Graz. Holocaust Literature and Ego Documents is a conference of the Center for Jewish Studies in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies as part of EHRI in Austria or EHRI-AT.

The call for this conference is closed, but it is possible to follow the event via Zoom. To take part in the conference via Zoom, please register at: office.cjs@uni-graz.at. 

June 10-11, 2024 | Location: Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2024 

First international seminar of the NWO project The Holocaust in “the Provinces”: Local Dynamics in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands (1925-1950)

The Holocaust is one of the best researched major episodes of mass destruction in modern Western history. Whereas the scholarship initially merely focused on German policy makers and decision takers, perceiving the Holocaust as a story of Nazi perpetrators and Jewish victims, today there is general agreement that the genocide should (also) be studied in its local, communal embedding.

February 20-22, 2024 | Location: Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest, Romania

Application Deadline: 8 December 2023

We are pleased to announce the EHRI Seminar on Holocaust Research in Romania, presented as part of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project, with support from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program. This seminar is jointly organized by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, both part of the EHRI Consortium.

The latest EHRI Document Blogpost, by Svetlana Suveica, follows the story of a trial that began on 29 January 1945, after gravestones from Jewish cemeteries in Odessa had been removed and transported to Bucharest during the Romanian occupation in the Second World War.

The Belgian State Archives is a federal scientific institution that is part of the Federal Science Policy (BELSPO). The institution consists of the General State Archives in Brussels, eighteen branches of the State Archives spread throughout the country and the Study and Documentation Centre on War and Contemporary Society (CegeSoma) in Brussels.