The Wiener Library
29 Russell Square
London
Greater London
WC1B 5DP
England
Website
Telephone
020 7636 7247
Fax
020 7436 6428
The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide is one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and Nazi era. The Library's unique collection of over one million items includes published and unpublished works, press cuttings, photographs and eyewitness testimony. It provides a resource to oppose anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice and racism.
Venue Type:
Library, Archive, Museum
The Wiener Library collects material related to the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. The Library has holdings of approx 65,000 items searchable online including books, pamphlets, periodicals and documents. The collection includes rare eye-witness accounts and an extensive press cuttings archive. The Library holds a photo archive of over 10,000 images, in the process of being digitised and made accessible through the website. Up to one third of the collection contains pre-war material and the Library continues to add to its collections.
Collection details
Archives, Photography, Religion, Social History, World Cultures
Wit's End: The Satirical Cartoons of Stephen Roth
Stephen Roth was a prolific Czech artist whose cartoons lampooned fascist dictators and put a wry spin on political events during the Second World War. Prior to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Roth immigrated to London where he remained the rest of his life contributing pieces to English newspapers. Roth's striking pen and ink style was so instantly recognisable that he rapidly gained a cult following. Working under the pen name ‘Stephen', Roth published several books of cartoons.
The Wiener Library's unique art collection includes several Roth originals, complete with corrections and captions written in the artists' hand. These remarkable drawings are given pride of place in this new exhibition, alongside Roth's books and artwork by some of his contemporaries.
Where
The Wiener Library
Website
"Why we knew nothing about Auschwitz": coming to terms with the Holocaust
Using new evidence, including unpublished documentary sources and freshly-elicited eyewitness testimony, Dr Helen Roche will explore former Napola pupils' diverse reactions to the troubled legacy of the Holocaust. Often, these men's reflections, whether private or public, touch upon the idea of whether they 'really knew about the Holocaust' at school, while the genocide was taking place. For instance, one published memoir by a pupil of Napola Ballenstedt is actually subtitled 'Der Versuch einer Antwort, warum ich von Auschwitz nichts wusste' ('The attempt to find an answer to why I knew nothing about Auschwitz'). However, other former pupils remember seeing or being tangentially involved with evacuations of concentration-camp inmates during the final days of the Third Reich.
When
1-2pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
Book launch: 'Walking with the Light'
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg joins us at The Wiener Library to celebrate the publication of his new book, Walking with the Light.
In 2010, with his dog Mitzpah by his side, Rabbi Wittenberg walked from his Grandfather's Frankfurt synagogue to his own in Finchley carrying the Ner Tamid--its Eternal Light--to co-shine forever in the newly built synagogue in North London. Walking with the Light is his story. A fascinating account of a spiritual and inspiring journey, Jonathan Wittenberg reflects on Europe's history and the importance of understanding the past if we wish to improve the future.
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg will be speaking about his journey and signing copies of the book as well as screening extracts from the film tie-in.
When
6:30-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
“Kosher Nostra”: Screening the Memory of the Jewish-American Gangster in 'The Godfather, Part II'
In 1974, 'The Godfather, Part II' provided an iconic moment in Hollywood history. Italian-American actor, Al Pacino, persuaded his mentor, Lee Strasberg (Jewish-American guru of Method acting), to play Hyman Roth, a character based on the Jewish-American gangster, Meyer Lansky. Dr Jonathon Munby (Lancaster University) examines how 'The Godfather, Part II' negotiated the representation of Jewish-American gangsters, looking back to the era of the 'classic' gangster, when Jewish actors became famous playing Italian gangsters, when 'tough Jews', imagined and real, portrayed a feistily defiant selfimage as violent Shtarkers who fought back against victimization.
This talk is part of the lecture series 'FilmTalk: The Jewish Villian', developed in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute London.
When
6:30-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
A Campaign to Save the World's Refugees: World Refugee Year 1959-60
A talk for Refugee Week 2013
The UN campaign for World Refugee Year (1959-1960) was an ambitious attempt by Western governments to increase public awareness of enduring refugee crises fifteen years after the end of the Second World War and to identify the possibilities for resettlement or local 'integration' to improve the lives of refugees around the world. Politicians who backed WRY had their eyes fixed firmly on the present, but the campaign was infused with awareness of the recent past. This talk explores the politics and the public relations of the campaign and its broader significance then and now.
Peter Gatrell teaches modern history at the University Manchester where he is also attached to the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. His books include A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Indiana University Press, 1999) and The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford University Press, 2013).
When
From 6:30pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
“I’m not going back”: A Refugee Week writing workshop
A workshop for Refugee Week 2013
This workshop will use the resources of The Wiener Library as inspiration for creative writing, including stories and poems which aim to convey what it is like to be an 'alien'. How does it feel to land in a new place, one that is not yet, nor perhaps ever will be, called 'home'?
The workshop is led by experienced tutor Lynette Craig (MPhil, Cert Ed LGSM).
When
2-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
Book launch: 'Ruta's Closet'
Ruta’s Closet is the harrowing and astonishing true story of how a Lithuanian Jewish family fought to escape the deadly clutches of Hitler’s Final Solution.
The ordeal of the Kron family – Ruta, her parents, Gita and Meyer, and her little sister Tamara – started in 1941. Their life in the small town of Shavl was upended when the Nazis invaded, and forced them and their Jewish neighbours into a squalid ghetto. One fateful morning, in 1943, the children of the ghetto were mercilessly snatched from their parents and slung onto trucks bound for Auschwitz. Ruta and her sister clung together in the old closet in which they had been hastily hidden, and prayed that nobody would discover them.
Journalist Keith Morgan joins us to relate how he met Holocaust survivor Ruth Kron Sigal and how he was moved to help her tell her story to the world. Ruta's Closet is the result of more than ten years of research comprising Ruta’s memories, interviews with survivors, diaries, existing papers and academic sources.
When
6:30-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
The Making of 'The Last Boat'
A Filmmaker's Journey to Tell the Story of the Last Kindertransport Boat from Poland
Filmmaker Alan Reich joins us to discuss his latest project, 'The Last Boat', which tells the story of the incredible rescue of seventy Jewish children and their two chaperones out of Poland on a British boat arriving in England three days before the start of World War Two. His father is one of the children who came to England on this kindertransport, but Alan did not know any details about this until much later in his life.
'The Last Boat' is a story of migration, identity and family secrets. Alan Reich draws on interviews with the surviving children and one of the chaperones, Rosi Ruben, who is 97 years old and still living in London. The documentary takes us back to the October 1938 deportation of the thousands of Jews from Germany and the ten months that they spent in the Polish frontier town of Zbaszyn. Along the way, the film asks what is the burden of inheritance for those that survived the War in England and the aftermath of catastrophic loss? For some of those rescued it is a chance to make sense of the fact that a large number of good-natured strangers decided to save their lives. How did this define their lives, and possibly the lives of their children?
Alan Reich is an independent film producer and director who has worked in film and television production for the past twenty five years. He is credited on many films including 'Jerusalem: City of Heaven', 'Munich (Mossad’s Revenge)', 'Diameter of The Bomb', 'The Lost World of the Holy Land' and Academy Award-winning 'One Day in September'.
When
1-2pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
FilmTalk: Once Upon a Time in Italy
Professor Sir Christopher Frayling discusses Sergio Leone's massive gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984). It told of the rise and fall of a gang of Jewish hoodlums from the Lower East Side of New York, over a forty year time span. Leone was determined not to make a film about the usual Italian or Irish gangsters but instead to focus on a community which had more rarely been featured in Hollywood thrillers. When the film opened in America it was severely cut and opinions were sharply divided on whether it was convincing or not.
This talk is part of the lecture series 'FilmTalk: The Jewish Villian', developed in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute London.
When
6:30-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
Imagining Multicultural London: Containment and Excess in 'Snatch'
Snatch is a comic book gangster film that can be seen to represent the backlash against perceived notions of political correctness in what is effectively a public schoolboy fantasy of working class life in East London. However the film also delineates the limits of this backlash in its depiction of minorities as either contained or as excess. In her talk Dr Rachel Garfield (University of Reading) will explore the tension between the genre, representation and Jewish identity.
This talk is part of the lecture series 'FilmTalk: The Jewish Villian', developed in partnership with the Leo Baeck Institute London.
When
6:30-8pm
Admission
Free, but booking is essential at our website (click link below).
Website
Getting there
By tube:
•Russell Square (Piccadilly line)
•Goodge Street (Northern line)
•St Pancras International (Metropolitan, Northern, Circle, Victoria and Hammersmith & City lines)
By bus:
The following buses stop nearby:
7, 59, 68, X68, 91, 168, 188
Access:
We have recently moved to new premises in a historic location on Russell Square. At this time, access for some disabled people is limited and we encourage visitors to contact us in advance if they are concerned about access.
•The ground floor exhibition area is accessible only by a flight of five steps. We will be installing step-free access in Spring 2012. Once inside the building, all areas are accessible to wheelchairs via the lift.
•There are adapted toilets on the basement level.
•The nearest step-free underground station is King’s Cross, St Pancras.
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