Based in London, The Wiener Holocaust Library is the world’s oldest and Britain’s largest collection of original archival material on pre-war Jewish life, the Nazi era and the Holocaust.

Dr Alfred Wiener recognised the Nazi threat early on and campaigned against Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s. After fleeing Germany for Amsterdam in 1933, he founded the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) at the request of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, collecting information about Nazi persecution. He brought his collection to Britain shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, where it became known as ‘Dr Wiener’s Library’.

The Wiener Holocaust Library is now home to hundreds of thousands of documents, letters, photographs, press cuttings, books, pamphlets, periodicals and unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, posters, artworks, and eyewitness testimonies.

Wiener Digital Collections enables online access to some of our most important collections, including documents used in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials, the family papers of Jewish refugees, photos taken at the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, JCIO reports, and responses to Nazism and fascism in Germany, Britain and beyond.

80 years ago: the liberation of Auschwitz

This year is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi-run death and concentration camp complex, Auschwitz. To mark this day, we assembled a selection of letters, documents, testimonies, pamphlets, and photographs attesting to the experiences of victims of Nazi crimes at Auschwitz.

On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops liberated the largest Nazi-run death and concentration camp complex, Auschwitz, which included Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), in German-occupied Poland. The SS personnel had already evacuated most of the surviving Auschwitz prisoners on what came to be known as ‘death marches’ westward, in advance of Soviet troops. The guards, too, abandoned the camp after murdering prisoners, destroying parts of the camp and sub-camps, and looting some of the warehouses. About 7,000 people, including hundreds of young children under the age of 15, remained behind in the camp to witness the Red Army’s arrival.

Most of the survivors in the camp were extremely ill due to the brutal conditions they had endured. Many had undergone medical experimentation, including Jewish twins. The Red Army discovered hundreds of corpses as well as vast amounts of personal belongings that had been stolen from the prisoners, as well several tons of human hair shorn from victims.

Liberating forces attempted to help the survivors, with the assistance of the Polish Red Cross, by organising medical care and field hospitals. The surviving children, most of whom were Jewish, left in February and March 1945, for charitable organisations and children’s homes. Only a few reunited with their parents.

Approximately 1.1 million people had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including 1 million Jews and over 20,000 Roma and Sinti people. Although the camp was opened by Soviet troops in January, ‘liberation’ for those who survived cannot be encapsulated in a single moment. Survivors faced a long struggle for physical and emotional rehabilitation; the search for lost family, friends, and homes; and confrontation with overwhelming loss.