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Archive goes online Digitisation allows new audience to bear witness

The Guardian

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January 27, 2025

One of the world's largest Holocaust archives is now accessible online after much of the collection was digitised.

- Lanre Bakare

The Wiener Holocaust Library's online platform includes more than 150,000 items collected over nine decades. Users can view letters, pamphlets and photographs that record the rise of fascism in Britain and Europe.

The director of the library, Dr Toby Simpson, said the project had been in the works for more than 10 years and that he hoped it would help the archive find a new audience of scholars and become a "new way of bearing witness in the digital age".

Some of the most fascinating items are Tarnschriften or "hidden writings" - anti-fascist propaganda hidden in everyday items including powder shampoo and tea leaves. Concealed in luggage and smuggled across borders into Germany, they were one of the few ways for Germans to learn of the Nazis' activities.

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