8. Refugee voices: we all bear witness
Wiener Holocaust Library, Russell Square
Here we are on the steps of the Wiener Holocaust Library, the oldest Holocaust archive in the world. The development of the Wiener Library reflects the history of Germany and National Socialism – from collecting evidence to support anti-fascist work, first in Berlin even before the Nazis came to power, then in exile, to providing evidence for Nazi war crime trials, creating its own collection of eyewitness accounts in the 1950s, to facilitating the scholars of today and linking the Holocaust to other genocides.
The first eyewitness accounts collected were in response to the November Pogroms in 1938. Collected in the days and weeks afterwards, they record the burning of synagogues, destruction of businesses, list those arrests and killed. These accounts convey the profound shock of people who, in many cases, were still in Germany because they clung on to the hope that things would get better again. There is an urgency to these accounts, as they were collected as events were unfolding, as opposed to accounts where refugees and survivors look back on their life. Thus they include details which are later seen as less important in the light of the greater horrors to come.
In 1954 Eva Reichmann, Director of Research at the Wiener Library from 1945 to 1959, announced a new project, to systematically collect personal interviews – or eyewitness accounts. Acknowledging that survivors may have to overcome strong resistance to remember she urges them to recount their experiences because of the vital issues at stake. To create a reliable source of information for future historians and to commemorate the dead, that their memory ‘should be enshrined in a dignified account of their achievements and suffering’.
Unlike more contemporary projects that have collected survivor testimony, which often seek to preserve the exact wording and recollections of the witness as they are stated, Reichmann and her team analysed the reports for accuracy in dates and other criteria, annotated and corrected them, and ensured that the interviewee signed the updated eyewitness report. Emphasis was on objectivity and accuracy, to ensure they would be credible and withstand historical scrutiny.
Interviewers and interviewees were matched according to their personal or professional background. Of course many were refugees or survivors themselves, some added their own accounts. There is no existing list of questions, but the ideal interviewer was described thus:
The project successfully gathered more than 1,300 reports in seven different languages over seven years and today the accounts are mostly accessible online. The accounts are well indexed. Interestingly, a search for kindertransport brings up only 41 accounts - mostly those of parents who mention in passing that their children were on the Kindertransport. Generally, today, accounts of child refugees dominate, because so many of them were – and are - alive today when there is much more interest in stories of refugees from the Nazis. What makes the Wiener Library accounts so interesting is that they are mostly by refugees and survivors who experienced Nazi persecution as adults. By the time there was a wider push to record survivor testimony in the 1980s, and in particular from 1994 with Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, many of the older survivors had died.
Around the same time as the Wiener Library was developing its collection of eyewitness accounts, in 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute was founded to secure the history and culture of German speaking Jewry. Survivors didn’t just need to record their survival, they also wanted to commemorate and celebrate the vibrant German-Jewish community that was destroyed and dispersed. This was particularly important for many of the older refugees who were steeped in German culture.
For our final story we return to Senate House's courtyard. Follow the walk