Archive

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Information and History

The archive of the Center for Research on Antisemitism collects documents on antisemitism, National Socialism, racism and right-wing extremism, but also on related areas, such as German-Jewish history and exile history.
The files of the Nuremberg trials from 1945-1948 make up a central component of the archival collection, and are particularly important for legal investigations of National Socialism. They include the documents from the International Military Tribunal main war criminal trials of Göring, Heß, Ribbentrop and others, as well as the 12 US military court trials that followed. The files are organized into various document series that contain the evidence of the prosecution and also many groups of files on the proceedings, including the stenographic protocols and the document books of both the prosecution and defense.

Inventory

1.

The archive also has biographical documents on about 25,000 German-speaking emigrants who had to leave Central Europe after 1933. The collection originated from a research project of the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration in New York and the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, from which the biographical handbook of German-speaking emigration was derived. The collection of autobiographical documents also includes about 150 mostly unpublished manuscripts and documents in which the experience of persecution and flight are depicted, as well as audio tapes and transcribed interviews from various research projects. An additional biographical manuscripts of German Jews are available on microfilm from the Houghten Library of Harvard University. They were submitted in 1940 for a competition titled "My Life in Germany Before and After January 30, 1933”.

2.

Since 1990, the center also owns the archive of the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe in New York. Since 1939, the emigrant organization has represented the interests of Jews who fled and emigrated from National Socialist Germany to the United States. The collection contains meeting protocols from 1939 and 1973, correspondence of the organization with official authorities as well as personal documents.

3.

In 2000 the Center was able to acquire the Diamant Collection, which contains approx. 50 m² of file material, primarily on Jewish cemeteries in Germany and cemetery desecration since the period of the Weimar Republic. Moreover it includes a collection of documents on the synagogues that were destroyed during the November Pogrom of 1938, and newspaper clippings going back to the 1950s on topics of antisemitism, Jewish life in Germany and confrontation with the past. The Diamant collection also contains a documentary on the Chemnitz Gestapo as well as diverse yearbooks and newsletters of Jewish institutions.

4.

The collection "Testaments to the Holocaust" from the archive of the Wiener Library in London is available on 76 rolls of microfilm. It includes National Socialist Propaganda material such as illustrated books, calendars and the antisemitic encyclopedia "Sigilla Veri", publications of the Hitler Youth, school and song books. There are also Jewish eyewitness accounts of National Socialist persecution, some of which were given just weeks and months after the November Pogrom of 1938. Periodicals published by the Wiener Library from 1934 to 1965 are also a part of this collection as are photos of Jewish life in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialist rule.

5.

The entire “DP Germany"/"Leo W. Schwarz Papers” collection of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York is available on 196 rolls of microfilm. This is a central source on the history of Jewish displaced persons and on Jewish history in postwar Germany. It is supplemented by DP newspapers and journals.

6.

Several periodicals are also available on microfilm. They include antisemitic publications like the "Alldeutschen Blätter", "La Libre Parole", "Der Stürmer" and "Der Völkische Beobachter" as well as periodicals on defense against antisemitism, such as "Die Abwehrblätter", "Die CV Zeitung" and the reports of the Alliance lsraélite Universelle. There are also periodicals which reflect the history of relations between Jews and non-Jews, such as Jewish daily papers and community newsletters. A special collection consists of the collected issues of thirty Yiddish newspapers from Berlin during the Weimar Republic.

7.

Since 1983, an ever-expanding press clippings archive documents developments and perceptions of antisemitism, right-wing extremism, minority issues and how the National Socialist past is being handled. Nine German daily and weekly newspapers are currently reviewed. Keyword headings divided into subiect, people and State(Länder) sections facilitate a quick search for specific articles. Access to about 1,500 documentary films, reports and feature films on topics relevant to the Center's research are also available in the video collection.

8.

A collection of right-wing extremist and antisemitic publications, fliers, stickers and anonymous letters, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, offer insight into the development of the international right-wing extremist scene. This area of the archive also includes a collection on public awareness of current phenomena with material on events, scandals and affairs of the 1980s and 1990s that touched on topics such as antisemitism, or confrontation of the National Socialist past. A compilation of court opinions from trials against right-wing extremists and Holocaust deniers completes this area.

9.

Of the many writings bequeathed to the archive, those of the judge Horst Göppinger stand out in particular. He was the author of the definitive work "Juristen Jüdischer Abstammung im ,Dritten Reich'" (Jurists of Jewish descent in the Third Reich). His estate contains biographical material on the fate of Jewish jurists under National Socialism and in exile, a collection of relevant essays, reviews and newspaper clippings, as well as material on the the Reich financial court.