You might have already noticed various news pieces on the EHRI communications channels about our ambitious plan to transform from a series of projects into a permanent organisation in the form of an ERIC – a European Research Infrastructure Consortium. We are now getting very close to realising this plan: on 26th January 2025, EHRI-ERIC will be formally launched at the Polin Museum in Warsaw, Poland. 

You may wonder - what does this mean for the many users and stakeholders of EHRI? We have started to compile a number of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that should help address the most common questions. If you have other questions that are not answered by the FAQs below, please send them to info@ehri-project.eu and we will incorporate them, along with an answer, in this article. 

Q1: What is an ERIC?

A2: ERIC stands for European Research Infrastructure Consortium, which is a specific legal form designed by the European Union in 2009 that facilitates the establishment and operation of research infrastructures with European interest on a non-economic basis.  ERICs come in different shapes and sizes, depending on their aims. They can be single-sited, which applies, e.g., to physical facilities that enable large-scale experiments or studies, or distributed, with one central hub hosted by one member country and several national nodes, which are national consortia of one or more organisations that are active in the field of the ERIC. EHRI-ERIC will be distributed and have its Central Hub in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and will be established with 11 founding members. 

Q2: What is the composition and structure of an ERIC? Who is precisely involved in an ERIC in which roles?

A2: So far, EHRI has been developed with funding from a series of EU-funded projects that involved a number of European and international partners. In the future, core funding will come from member or observer states of the ERIC. Observers are countries who are not yet able to become full members of the ERIC, but intend to become members in the future. These countries will set up their own national nodes to foster EHRI activities in their countries and support the overall mission and vision of the EHRI-ERIC. These national nodes are essential in the realisation of EHRI’s objectives as they operationalise its strategic agenda at the national level.The General Assembly, the highest governing body of EHRI-ERIC with full decision-making power, will bring together ministerial representatives from member countries, while the National Coordinators Committee, EHRI’s key body tasked to implement and coordinate EHRI activities and to ensure the transnational cohesion of the EHRI-ERIC, will bring together scientific representatives from the national nodes. An Advisory Board composed of distinguished, internationally recognised scientists, scholars, experts, and stakeholders’ representatives will provide strategic advice to EHRI-ERIC. 

Q3: What are the advantages of an ERIC?

A3: EHRI did an extensive analysis of different legal forms that would enable EHRI to become a permanent organisation. In short, the conclusion was that the ERIC framework provides the much needed flexibility to meet EHRI’s specific needs to achieve its objectives as a research infrastructure. That said, three additional advantages of an ERIC for EHRI should be highlighted: First, in becoming an ERIC, EHRI secures its long-term sustainability. Up to now, the EHRI consortium had to re-apply for core funding every 4 years to be able to secure its future. This made medium- to long-term planning very difficult. This sustainability leads to the second advantage, namely the ability to plan for and carry out more ambitious, highly innovative activities for which more than 4 years would be needed. Thirdly, by becoming an ERIC, EHRI will join a community of currently 28 research infrastructures that are considered a key instrument to the European commission’s ambition to create the European Research Area. Joining this community comes not only with increased visibility internationally and significant prestige, it will also open up access to new funding opportunities at European level and thereby enable EHRI to pursue more ambitious aims. 

Q4: Who will join the EHRI-ERIC as it is set up? Will there be other members in the future?

A4: EHRI-ERIC will be set up with 11 founding members, Israel, Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Romania, the UK, Poland and the Netherlands. But this is just the start, EHRI-ERIC will be open to future members and is in fact already working actively on attracting further member countries (the EHRI Implementation project, 2024-2026, has a work package dedicated to attracting new members). 

Q5: How can I get in touch with my national EHRI?

A5: The distributed EHRI-ERIC with a Central Office and National Nodes is growing slowly but surely; it will be formally set up in early 2025. So far, the following National Nodes have dedicated web pages with contact details:

Austria: EHRI-AT (https://www.ehri.at/)

Czech Republic: EHRI-CZ (https://www.ehri.cz/)

United Kingdom: EHRI-UK (https://www.ehri-uk.org/)

Croatia: EHRI-HR (https://ehri.hr/)

For questions about other National Nodes, please contact the EHRI project at info@ehri-project.eu. 

Q6: And what about institutions in countries who are not members of EHRI-ERIC?

A6: Institutions in member states of the European Union, associated countries or third countries can participate formally in EHRI-ERIC if their country becomes a member. That does not exclude interested institutions or individuals in those countries to benefit from EHRI services and activities as these are open and accessible to all, no matter where they are based (note though that access to some services, such as the Conny Kristel Fellowship, are based on merit).  Moreover, EHRI-ERIC will seek to integrate institutions located in countries that cannot become a full member as cooperating partners. Intergovernmental organisations can, on the other hand, become members on the same basis as countries.  

Q7: Will all resources of EHRI be part of the EHRI-ERIC?

A7: Our plan is to retain all current EHRI services, both digital and in-person. Our digital services will continue to be freely accessible to anyone who is interested, regardless of where they are based, and the Conny Kristel Fellowship will remain a core part of our in-person offers, alongside transnational and interdisciplinary workshops and seminars. Our ambition, however, is to further develop and add to these existing services. To fulfil this ambition, we depend on the financial and in-kind support of our stakeholders - the member countries and the national nodes - and the availability of further external funding that can support our ambition. We are confident that together, we will be able to achieve what we set out to do: to secure seamless access to all sources and expertise from across Europe and beyond that are relevant to the study of the Holocaust.

Q8: Will I stay subscribed to the EHRI Newsletter?

A8: Yes, you don’t need to do anything. Everyone subscribed to our EHRI Newsletter will continue to receive regular updates about EHRI in their inboxes. 

Q9: What do we gain with the transition to an EHRI-ERIC? What do we lose?

A9: See A3, we gain security in funding and the ability to plan long-term, be more ambitious and more innovative, acquire increased visibility and prestige and get access to funding opportunities at European level. This gets us a lot closer to achieving our vision: to secure seamless access to all sources and expertise from across Europe and beyond that are relevant to the study of the Holocaust. Becoming an ERIC is a big step and means that we will need to adapt to different ways of working. Such changes can come with losses, but we expect them to be temporary. At the beginning,e.g., we lose some of our formal relationships with partner institutions that have been part of one or more of the five EHRI projects that have gotten us to where we are now. But we do not lose the human connections, and we hope and aspire to continue working with as many institutions and organisations in Europe and beyond that share our vision and support excellence in Holocaust research, commemoration and education.

Q10: Since National Governments will have a stronger role in the EHRI-ERIC, how will this impact on the Research Infrastructure and on research as such?

A10: Yes, national governments will be represented in the General Assembly (GA) of the EHRI, the highest governing body of EHRI-ERIC with full decision-making power. This might indeed seem as if the experts in Holocaust research and documentation, who have so far decided on EHRI’s direction, might lose their say. However, the GA is tasked with providing overall oversight and, as per the statutes of the EHRI-ERIC, with ensuring planned activities of EHRI meet the research infrastructure’s mission and ambition. Developing and implementing the scientific agenda of EHRI, on the other hand, lies firmly with the Director and the National Coordinator Committee (NCC) that will consist of scientific representatives from the national nodes.  The NCC will be EHRI’s key body tasked to implement and coordinate EHRI activities and to ensure the transnational cohesion of the EHRI-ERIC. 

Q11: What is the difference between EHRI-ERIC and IHRA? Where do these two organisations connect?

A11: Although IHRA and EHRI have aims and objectives in common and share similar interests, the ways of working of these two organisations are different. EHRI was set up in 2010 as a research infrastructure with the aim to overcome the geographical fragmentation of sources and expertise by setting standards for excellence in transnational Holocaust research and documentation. Since then it has worked with a strong consortium of 27 partner institutions active in Holocaust research and documentation from across Europe, Israel and the United States of America, and representing 18 countries. One key outcome of this endeavour so far has been The EHRI Portal  that provides access to information on Holocaust-related archival material held in institutions across Europe and beyond.

EHRI was initially set up with European funding but will become an ERIC (see A2) and be supported by member countries. As an ERIC, it will continue to endeavour to fill gaps in national Holocaust research infrastructure landscape by enabling scientific excellence, facilitating researchers’ access to archival sources and expertise, optimising data use, delivering of education and training, enhancing transnational collaboration in Europe and facilitating international cooperation. Its focus is thus primarily on research excellence that, in the field of Holocaust research, is directly dependent on access to archival sources. 

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, on the other hand, has a much broader remit. It is the “only intergovernmental organisation with a mandate focused on addressing contemporary challenges related to the Holocaust and genocide of the Roma”. As such, it is not a scientific network but rather a forum for policy makers. To deliver on its mandate, it has identified eight focus areas that relate to the Holocaust or genocide of the Roma and that it centers its work on, ranging from Holocaust denial and distortion to Holocaust, genocide and crimes against humanity. EHRI and IHRA are  particularly suited to cooperate and strengthen each other in IHRA’s focus area of Holocaust archives and research where  joint initiatives have in fact already happened in the past and where EHRI and IHRA are currently working together to put the existing cooperation on a long-term, sustainable footing. In summary, IHRA and EHRI have complementary expertise and access to complementary networks that will enable them to support and strengthen each other's work in the future. 

Q12: Will EHRI-ERIC be something like the European Yad Vashem?

A12: EHRI’s partnerships with Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) have been crucial to its success and will continue to be so. Although EHRI-ERIC has the ambition to become the European equivalent to these two major organisations, it will never compete with their work but only complement it. In establishing EHRI as an ERIC, Europe will, for the first time, take joint responsibility for a shared past that continues to shape the societies we live in today. As a European organisation, EHRI-ERIC aims to enable the study of the Holocaust to move from a pre-dominantly national enquiry to a transnational one, opening up new insights into this shared history, and safeguarding the historical record at a European level. Something that has been long overdue. Yad Vashem will be part of EHRI’s new chapter as a full partner while we hope that USHMM, together with other important international organisations such as the USC Shoah Foundation, will soon join as a cooperating partner. Our strong partnerships with Yad Vashem and USHMM might thus change in style but not in essence. 

Q13: What is the bigger vision/mission of this EHRI-ERIC? What can be achieved together in this infrastructure more than on a single-institution level?

A13: EHRI-ERIC’s vision is to “secure seamless access to all sources and expertise from across Europe and beyond that are relevant to the study of the Holocaust. It thereby highlights the relevance of Holocaust research for free and open societies with shared democratic values”. Its mission is to “overcome the geographical fragmentation of sources and expertise and set standards for excellence in transnational Holocaust research, documentation, education and remembrance.” As such, EHRI continually develops and maintains a distributed, digital and human infrastructure that provides access to archival resources and services to a diverse community. Such an ambitious vision cannot be achieved at national, regional or institutional level alone. In fact, the dispersal of archival collections and expertise relevant to the study of the Holocaust across multiple institutions in many countries has been the very reason why EHRI was deemed as necessary in 2010. Such a challenge can per definition not be addressed at local or national level, and excellent transnational Holocaust research with a European perspective can only be made possible through the bridging of geographical and institutional divides. By setting up EHRI-ERIC, we will take another crucial step towards achieving this vision. 

Q14: How open will EHRI-ERIC be for further partners? Also outside of the European Union?

A14: In principle, very open. In fact, to achieve its vision - secure seamless access to all sources and expertise from across Europe and beyond that are relevant to the study of the Holocaust - it will be crucial that EHRI-ERIC continues to work with  archives, libraries, research centers, museum and memorial sites from Western and Eastern Europe as well as Israel and United States of America, and beyond. The ERIC legal framework is open to European Union Member States, associated countries (such as Israel) and third countries (such as the USA). EHRI-ERIC’s statutes provide for different forms of association to EHRI: membership, observership, and cooperating partners. Each comes with different obligations and rights and together, they will provide the framework for a diversity of institutions to join EHRI-ERIC.  Cooperating partners will be institutions such as the USHMM or the Shoah Foundation that are important for achieving EHRI’s vision but cannot become a member of an ERIC due to domestic legal reasons. In fact, EHRI recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Shoah Foundation with the aim to develop a close and lasting collaboration agreement between EHRI and the Shoah Foundation. 

Q15: How can EHRI-ERIC better promote new, innovative, and especially gender-sensitive approaches to Holocaust research?

A15: EHRI-ERIC will consist of a Central Hub and national nodes, consortia of relevant organisations in member countries. The task of the national nodes will be to foster EHRI activities in their countries and support the overall mission and vision of the EHRI-ERIC. As such, they are essential in the realisation of EHRI’s objectives as most of the work that has up to now been done as part of EHRI projects will in the future be done at the national level by the national nodes using national funding. National Nodes will be represented in the National Coordinators Committee (NCC) that will be tasked with ensuring the implementation of EHRI’s strategic agenda. The NCC will, in turn, be supported by working groups, a flexible instrument that will support cooperation and foster innovation across the national nodes in areas of specific, transnational importance to EHRI. As a bottom-up initiative, driven by the needs of the community of experts in Holocaust research and documentation,  working groups will thus be able to directly promote innovative research including in areas such as gender-sensitive approaches. Finally, as an ERIC, EHRI will have its own Gender Equality Plan that will be a key tool in helping promote the sex and gender dimension in research.

Q16: How can EHRI-ERIC better integrate countries from former Eastern Europe and at the margins of current Europe which often do not have the institutional capacities to start the membership process?

A16: Similar to the concept of working groups as outlined in A15, EHRI-ERIC foresees the possibility to have regional groupings. These regional groupings can be formed based on existing transnational relations or originate from mutual commonalities such as shared languages. Regional groupings have several advantages: they can increase the audience of National Nodes by reaching across borders; they can pool efforts at the level of two or more National Nodes, thereby increasing the amount of overhead of each individual National Node; and, in response to this specific question, they can lower the barrier of entry for potential partner institutions that are located just outside existing Member States. By joining a regional grouping, institutions in former Eastern Europe and at the margins of current Europe could be actively involved in EHRI-ERIC even without the institutional capacities to start the membership process.

Q17: How will EHRI-ERIC secure its transnational mission after the division into national nodes?

A17: Since 2010, EHRI has made demonstrable progress in addressing the grand challenge facing the field of Holocaust research and documentation, namely the wide dispersal and fragmentation of sources and expertise across thousands of institutions in Europe and beyond. The EHRI Portal is a key outcome of this achievement that could not have been made without true transnational cooperation. More importantly, although the new structure of EHRI-ERIC, with a central hub and national nodes scattered across Europe and beyond, requires the creation of national nodes, it stimulates and even necessitates transnational cooperation through its governance structure. National Nodes will be represented in the National Coordinator Committee that will be driving and implementing the strategic direction of the EHRI-ERIC, including the trans-national coordination and integration of all national activities. A15 and A16 explain how Working Groups and Regional Groupings will continue to enhance the transnational cooperation that has been key to EHRI’s success so far. 

And we should not underestimate that EHRI-ERIC is set up from within the EHRI consortium that has developed and cemented strong international working relationships over the last 14 years that will not be easily undone.

Do you have further questions on EHRI’s future? Please don’t hesitate to send them to info@ehri-project.eu, and we will do our best to answer them.