The EHRI Document Blog has introduced the series If This Is a Woman, concentrating on gender and Holocaust research. The initial idea for the series traces back to a conference of the same name held in 2019 at Comenius University in Bratislava (co-organizers were the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History and the Slovak Academy of Science), which showed the vitality of the field as well as the wide range of topics which can be researched from a gender perspective.

Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day is the date in the Jewish calendar to mourn the loss of the six million people murdered during the Holocaust. This year Yom HaShoah falls on 20 April. Due to the coronavirus situation, the commemorations will be very different from previous years. However, many EHRI partners and associates have found ways to mark the event online.

On 15 April 2020, it is 75 years ago that Bergen Belsen was liberated. In the EHRI Online Edition on Early Holocaust Testimony, you can find many samples of early testmonies of Jewish witnesses and survivors taken before the 1960s, including accounts of life in Bergen Belsen. One of the most striking testimonies on this camp comes from Herta Bondyová, a young Czech woman.

The Dutch Network of War Collections (Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen) has won a prestigious GLAMi Award with its WarLives.org website. This is one of the most important international prizes in the field of heritage and innovation. The Award is presented every year during the MuseWeb Conference in the United States. In other categories, winners included the Smithsonian Institution and The Getty.

EHRI partner, The Wiener Holocaust Library has relaunched The Holocaust Explained, an educational resource that has been created to help learners understand the essential facts of the Holocaust, its causes and its consequences. The website aims to answer questions that students most often want to ask, in an accessible, reliable and engaging way.

The content is clearly organised across nine easy-to-navigate topic areas, such as 'What was the Holocaust?' and 'How did the Nazis rise to power?' It is an extremely popular online resource with both teachers and students alike, and visited from 140 different countries.

Due to the coronavirus crisis most of you will by now be living and working under difficult circumstances in a state of more or less severe lockdown. Our first concern is for your health and safety.

EHRI has always been as much about connecting collections as about connecting people. Now that we all have to stay in, EHRI continues to offer its many online services and resources. If your private and professional circumstances allow it, you can still do your research on the EHRI Portal to Holocaust Sources, read the latest online edition on Early Holocaust Testimony, catch up on all the EHRI blog posts, or start the Online Course in Holocaust Studies.

Last but not least, in the midst of these uncertain times, EHRI received some good news that we wanted to share with you and you can read in this newsletter.

On August 19, 1944, a quite extraordinary thing happened in Hungary, which had been under German occupation for five months already. Dr János Benedek, the leading civil servant of the Kiskőrös district, ordered the internment of István Velich, the agricultural officer of the district and local functionary of the Eastern Frontline Companions’ Association. This fascist, paramilitary organization – comprising of 200 members –, which had been founded in 1942 by veterans who had served at the Russian front, was infamous for its extreme anti-Semitic and anti-communist conviction and the obsession with remaining loyal to the Germans until the end. Until March 19, 1944, the time of the German occupation, it operated illegally, afterwards, they stepped up openly. The members organized unexpected attacks on Jews and leftist workers, as a result of which they earned the dubious reputation of one of the most dreaded organizations.

Green Light for Fellowship and Training Programme

Last week, the European Commission announced that EHRI would receive new funding from the Research and Innovation Programme Horizon2020 to sustain and further develop its main resources and services. Already in the process of transforming from a project into a permanent body for international Holocaust research, EHRI now, with this new funding, can maintain and expand its successful resources, such as the fellowships, training activities and the EHRI Portal. Hence, over the next 4 years, EHRI will follow two paths: developing into a permanent infrastructure and progressing as a longstanding, active project. Having both streams of funding is especially good news for our user community as it means that they can keep on using EHRI’s new and improved services, while behind the scene, foundations for a stable organization are being built.

Apply before 1 May 2020

From June 3-June 24, 2020, participants have the opportunity to study with Professor Brian Schiff and Professor Charles Talcott first in Paris and then embarking on a practical exploration of the ideas explored in their courses on a 5-day trip to Poland.

Between 11 and 13 February 2020, the EHRI consortium assembled in Munich to kick-off a new era. EHRI’s longstanding partner, the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, kindly hosted the event.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure was founded in 2010 and established itself during two project phases. In December 2019, EHRI entered a new phase in which it will transform itself from a project into a permanent, sustainable entity. To mark this, around sixty people representing fifteen partners from thirteen countries gathered in Munich.