The Alfred Landecker Foundation is pleased to invite applications from highly qualified postdocs in the humanities and social sciences, for a full-time lecturer program set to begin on October 1, 2022. Up to five university lectureships will each run for five years. The selection process is led by the Alfred Landecker Foundation’s Academic Council.

Commemorations such as Holocaust Memorial Day draw our attention to the existence and meaning of photographs in remembering the Holocaust. But on many occasions, we do not know the story of the persons portrayed.

Bookpresentation Commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History in Vilnius

On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the presentation of the new book The Traces of Crimes Do Not Disappear - Mass Killings in the Paneriai Forest,1941-1944 took place at the Samuel Bak Museum, which is a branch of EHRI's partner in Vilnius, the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History. 

In Memory of Benny and Tilly Joffe z"l

The Yad Vashem International Book Prize aims to encourage excellent and enlightening research on new topics relating to the Holocaust or those topics needing re-evaluation in light of newly discovered documentation. Research accuracy, scholarship, methodology, originality, importance of the research topic, and literary merit are important factors in the work’s consideration.

This new EHRI Blog post, by Madeline Vadkerty, looks at letters written by Alžbeta Helena Donathová, a young Jewish-Slovak woman, to the president of Slovakia. They are an example of the thousands of letters asking for clemency from anti-Semitic measures during the Holocaust in Slovakia.

The post analyses the strategies in her appeal and looks at the information such entreaties reveal about how Jews experienced persecution in rural Slovakia. In doing so, the post also offers an insight into the collection of such appeals and entreaties to Slovak President Tiso, which is held at the Slovak National Archive.

Read the Document Blog Post

Numerous activities take place this year to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. To many of us, it can feel strange these days. We are remembering and talking about a calamity that took place eighty years ago while finding ourselves in very troubled times again. It is true that in some ways humanity may be doing better than ever before, for instance in reducing child mortality. But we are facing huge and urgent problems in many other areas such as the climate crisis, the public health emergency, and the increasing polarization and violence in public debates and polemics. To see anti-democratic tendencies, hate speech, xenophobia and antisemitism on the march, its proponents waving away the warnings from those familiar with how the Holocaust began, namely with dangerous words, can be profoundly disturbing. As if this were not enough, one of the very regions where the Nazis and their associates shot Jews to death, is again living under a dark cloud of a potential war.

As before, however, we carry on, from a conviction that improving how humans treat each other must involve a determined effort to increase everyone’s understanding of the evil which humans have inflicted upon groups singled out as enemies. If mass murder with this intensity and scale did happen once, with some variation it can happen again.

EHRI’s work is and will remain relevant. What we have achieved so far, has made an impact. That is also why its partner institutions and friends are more motivated than ever. Best wishes to all of you, within EHRI or elsewhere, who are involved in Holocaust remembrance, education and research.

Karel Berkhoff and Reto Speck, Project Directors EHRI

A New web application to study the spatial exclusion of Jews in Nazi-occupied Prague, published on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Where did the Jewish residents of Prague live during World War II before they were deported? Which places were they not allowed to visit during the occupation? In which places were they detained for violating anti-Jewish prohibitions and regulations?

Answers to these and other questions can be found in the new MemoGIS Prague web application, which will be published on 27 January 2022 on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. MemoGIS can be used from mobile devices on site or from a home or school computer. As of now, the app is available in Czech and an English version is under preparation.

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the day upon which every year the world would mark and remember the Holocaust and its victims. In 1945,  27 January was the day that the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp complex was liberated.

Holocaust Memorial Day or Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated worldwide by local, national and international events, that include conferences, film screenings, memorial services, exhibitions, discussions, book publications and more.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure thrives on the dedication and commitment of its 27 partners. Most EHRI partners also organise events on or around 27 January to commemorate the Holocaust, to learn and to never forget. A selection of these events taking place in many different counrties is presented here below.

Location: Online | Date: 18-22 July 2022 | Application Deadline: 1 March 2022

We invite Holocaust scholars, educators, representatives of archives and museums, tour guides, and digital humanities professionals to take part in the EHRI-Seminar “The Lviv Ghetto: Narrating and Mapping the History of Exclusion and Violence”, organized by EHRI partner the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Lviv, Ukraine).

An Analysis of the Correspondence of Dr Joseph Thon | Invitation to Polish speaking scholars

The latest EHRI Document Blog Post, wiritten by Charlie Knight, contextualises the correspondence between the representative of the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund in Geneva, Joseph Thon, and five Polish citizens forced to flee to England in 1939-1940. By looking into the specific connections and relationships that joined the refugees, the post analyses how they exercised their connection with Joseph Thon in Geneva to procure information on, and support for, their families and friends in Poland.

The post also invites Polish speaking scholars to do further research on the letters in the Abraham Silberschein deposit at Yad Vashem to create a fuller picture of Thon’s activities in Geneva and the networks which existed.