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The Wiener Holocaust Library

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📚The world's oldest Holocaust archive and Britain's largest collection on the Nazi era
🏛️Free exhibitions & events | Collections | Research | Outreach

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📣 Coming this Autumn!

In 1894 in Paris, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested and falsely accused of treason. As the only Jewish captain in the French Army, antisemitism underlay his conviction for selling military secrets to Germany.

As Dreyfus languished in captivity on Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guyana, an extraordinary public debate about whether he was guilty or innocent played out in the press in France and across Europe, turning the ‘Dreyfus Affair’ into one of the first viral mass media moments in history. Antisemitic conspiracy theories and imagery were used to undermine Dreyfus and his defenders, and the debate surrounding his innocence turned into a fight over what values should embody France.

Marking 120 years since Dreyfus was exonerated and his innocence restored, a new exhibition will use documents, press cuttings and posters from the archive of The Wiener Holocaust Library to bring to life the polemical debate that surrounded this notorious miscarriage of justice.

Launching in London on 5 November.

Click the link in our bio to find out more. by @wienerlibrary

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15 days ago

What can a songbook tell us about life in a Nazi slave labour camp?

#reels #wienerholocaustlibrary #holocaustmuseum #londonexhibition #nazislavelabour by @wienerlibrary

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a month ago

📣 Coming next month!

A new exhibition at the Wiener Holocaust Library launching in May 2026 will reveal the scale and brutality of the Nazi slave labour system, displaying eyewitness testimony, clandestine photographs and damning war crimes trial judgments that uncover this tangled history.

Between 1939 and 1945, 20 million people were exploited as slave and forced labourers by the Nazi regime. Among their number were concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, and foreign civilian workers.

The system was lethal: two and a half million slave labourers died. Among the victims were Jewish labourers in Auschwitz subcamps dying from chemical poisoning, POWs starved to death while forced to build Nazi Atlantic defences in the Channel Islands, and Soviet civilians made to perform backbreaking work in Germany.

While visitors may know that imprisoned Jews were forced to work in concentration camps across the German Reich, many may not know that by 1944 one in four workers in Germany was a slave labourer, forced to drive a greedy German economy fighting a ‘Total War’ on several fronts.

Nazi ideology based on dehumanisation and driven by political terror that emerged in the 1930s was, by the outbreak of war, an economic necessity.

📅 Nazi Slave Labour: Perpetrators and Victims launches on 20 May 2026 and will run until 30 October.
📍Exhibition events will take place throughout the run, with the first free events being announced soon.
📨 Sign up to our newsletter to get all of our latest news and behind the scenes insights straight to your inbox.

This exhibition is supported by Hans und Berthold Finkelstein Stiftung.

Find out more 🔗 wienerholocaustlibrary.org/exhibition

#slavelabour #nazihistory #germanhistory #holocausthistory #forcedlabour #genocide #holocaust #jewishhistory #germanhistory #wienerlibrary #wienerholocaustlibrary #concentrationcamp #nazislavelabour #londonmuseum #historymuseum #freeexhibition #freelondon #londonhistory #londonexhibition #bloomsbury #holocaustmuseum #holocaustarchive #holocaustlibrary #londonlibrary by @wienerlibrary

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6 months ago

On 5 October 1938 it was agreed by Nazi leaders that all German Jewish citizens should have their passports stamped with an identifying letter ‘J’.

The marking of their passports alienated the Jewish community and constituted an important part of the campaign of persecution.

📸 Documents from the Ernst Kamm collection, Wiener Holocaust Library Collections. by @wienerlibrary

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44 minutes ago

📣 Tickets are now live!

Our Annual Alfred Wiener Holocaust Memorial lecture is taking place on the 4 November and will be delivered by esteemed historian Professor Zoë Waxman.

Tickets are available to book now to attend either online or in-person at Gresham College, London.

Click the link in our bio or visit wienerholocaustlibrary.org/events by @wienerlibrary

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8 hours ago

Following the Einsatzgruppen‘s initial advance into the Soviet Union and the resulting widespread massacres, many of the Jews who had been initially spared were forced into ghettos and used as slave labour. Those incapable of carrying out hard labour were murdered.

As Germany’s military advances slowed, the ruthlessness of the actions against the Jews and others seen as racial enemies of the Nazis radically increased.

An example of this ruthlessness can be seen in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, where, on 4 October 1941, 1985 Jews were killed by Einsatzgruppen and local Lithuanian collaborators. Karl Jäger, leader of Einsatzkommando 3A, later reported that the massacre was in retaliation for the murder of a German policeman in the ghetto.

Klara Klau was deported to and murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania, in November 1941. Her daughter, Selma, had been able to leave Germany on one of the last Kindertransports to London, aged 16. by @wienerlibrary

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a day ago

"...on the way to Theresienstadt… it will be quite a time until you get any more news..."

On 2 October 1942, Dr Hans Schmoller sent this Red Cross telegram to his sister in law who had emigrated to England in 1939. Exactly a month after sending the telegram he died in unknown circumstances at the hands of the Nazis in the ghetto. by @wienerlibrary

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3 days ago

Our latest Annual Review is bursting with all of our fantastic achievements from the past 12 months.

Our Year in Numbers shows the important impact our work has for researchers, survivors of the Holocaust and their family members, and the wider public.

Explore the full review via our website at wienerholocaustlibrary.org/news by @wienerlibrary

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4 days ago

82 years ago this month, Robert (Bob) Hanf was murdered in Auschwitz.
Hanf (1894–1944) was far more than a composer. He was a violinist, writer, poet, draughtsman and painter — a remarkably multifaceted artist whose creativity moved naturally between music, words and images. Several of his visual works are now held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
His musical voice was silenced by the Holocaust, but his work was not erased.
Among the works that survive is his Serenade for Orchestra, composed in 1935: five concise, interconnected movements, premiered in Haarlem in 1937.
Today, we remember Hanf by returning to what he created.
Listen to the first recording of Bob Hanf’s Serenade for Orchestra, performed by Symphonova and conducted by Shelley Katz, recorded as part of the Reawakening Suppressed Music project. Link in bio.

#onthisday #onthisdayinhistory #reawakeningsuppressedmusic #composer #bobhanf by @wienerlibrary

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6 days ago

On 29 and 30 September 1941, in the Ukranian capital, Kyiv, the Babi Yar massacre took place. Over the course of two days, 33,771 Jews were massacred in a mass shooting at the Babi Yar ravine by the Ukraine police and Einsatzgruppe C.

The massacre was one of the largest single mass killings that the Nazis and their collaborators carried out during the Holocaust.

These types of mass murder took place alongside spontaneous killings, public hangings and beatings, and medical experiments, where many local Nazis experimented the most effective ways to commit mass murder.

In total, historians estimate that around one million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust in Ukraine.

📸 Babi Yar near Kiev, Ukraine, in 1960. Wiener Holocaust Library collections. by @wienerlibrary

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6 days ago

📣 Weekend exhibition open day!

Join us on Sunday 11 October for a weekend opening of our exhibition gallery, offering an exclusive chance to see this exhibition outside of our usual hours!

The curators will also be offering a guided tour of the display, including insights into their research and curatorial decisions.

The exhibition will be open from 11am – 4pm. For visitors throughout the day there is no need to book in advance.

The guided tour will take place at 11:30am, book your place via our website.

Click the link in our bio and 'events', or go to wienerholocaustlibrary.org/events by @wienerlibrary

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7 days ago

Pamphlets from British fascist groups, antisemitic tracts from 18th century France, and the document collection of a prominent Jewish emigre artist are ready to be explored in our selection of online exhibitions....

If you missed past exhibitions at the Library, you can search our collection of new-look online exhibitions with highlights from the curation and additional insight into our unique collections.

Click the link in our bio or visit exhibitions.wienerholocaustlibrary.org to start your search. by @wienerlibrary

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10 days ago