Acknowledgments
The project has benefited from the work, skill, advice and interest of a number of individuals. They generously contributed many hours and much commitment and care to the translating, editing and research, for which The Wiener Holocaust Library is profoundly grateful.
The Wiener Holocaust Library has always recognised the significance of its collections of early eyewitness accounts. Initial cataloguing, translating and editing work on a small scale has been underway with this collection since at least 2011. It was only in April 2015, however, that more intensive work could begin. The Department of Communities and Local Government provided a grant of £300,000 to support the widening of access to The Wiener Holocaust Library's unique collection of early eyewitness accounts of Holocaust survivors. Among other things, this funding has enabled this extraordinary collection originally gathered by Dr Eva Reichmann and her colleagues in the 1950s, to be digitised, transcribed, catalogued, index and translated into English for the first time.
The cataloguing and indexing of the collection was undertaken completed by a staff team at The Wiener Holocaust Library led by Dr Toby Simpson and supported throughout by Jessica Green. In 2017, Freelance Cataloguer Ulrike Smalley worked on completing full item-level catalogue records for The Wiener Holocaust Library's main Collections Catalogue.
Alongside this cataloguing and indexing of this large and complex collection at a granular level, translation work has been a major focus of the project. Thus far, over 6,000 pages of translation have been completed, mostly by volunteers. We are incredibly grateful to our gifted and highly motivated team of volunteer translators for their dedication and hard work. Contributors of volunteer translation to this project include, in alphabetical order: Sarah Arens, Jenifer Ball, Anna Bezeley, Christopher Bone, Sue Boswell, Tessa Bouwman, Michael Cavanagh, Hilary Coleman, Lidia Creech, Katherine Dolan, Margaret Drummond, Halina Gadbury, Renee Gallop, Tim Gluckmann, Mathias Gronau, Erika Hagelberg, Katharina Heinz, Paul Hinchliff, Shoshanah Hoffmann, Luke Hubbard, Rebecca Irmgrueth, Dorothy Jarman, Rose Jones, Tim Kahn, Dennis Kaiser, Katrin Kallweit, Andrzej Korzeniowski, Dorothy Jarman, Monika Lendermann, Irmgard Liste, Richard Littlejohns, Catherine Lumber, Cyd MacNaboe, Des Maguire, Anthea Maxted, Ruth Morris, Olivia Morton, Elena Mueller, Anna Norpoth, Paula Oppermann, Ortrun Peyn, Ben Richardson, Julia Richter, Simone Robinson, Elisabeth Rudolf, Pierre Sauvenee, Rick Schneider, Beverley Simmons, Kirsty Smith, Carolin Sommer, Norbert Stieber, Sabine Stieber, Barbara Stone, Madrim Warsosumarto, Karen Watkins, Jessica West, Birgit Wildt, Kim Winkler, David Wirth, Helen Wolfe and Rita Woolf.
Digitisation was completed by UK Archiving. Transcription of the collection was undertaken by ScanDataExperts. The preparation of both projects was planned in consultation with Geoff Laycock of ScanDataExperts. The digital library available on this website has been created by The Wiener Holocaust Library with the software developers intranda GmbH.
This project also benefited from the pro bono help from web content management system provider, IMAGIZ (Pete Vox), which was used to create a digital library of 350 eyewitness accounts of the November Pogrom of 1938. Pogrom 1938: Testimonies from 'Kristallnacht' is now available online in a redeveloped version designed and developed by intranda. The project also owes a great deal to the legacy of our longstanding Wiener Holocaust Library volunteer Dr Ruth Levitt, who worked incredibly hard on the Pogrom 1938 project but sadly died in 2016.
Colleagues at The Wiener Holocaust Library have contributed in numerous ways to the realisation of this project's goals, some of which are still actively being pursued. Dr Toby Simpson led the project, with significant contributions from Jessica Green, Dr Christine Schmidt, Mary Vrabecz, Elise Bath, Leah Sidebotham, Bianca Bailey and Howard Falksohn. Non-staff members also made significant contributions, including interns Aline Bludau and Katrin Hansen, who both worked extensively on the cataloguing of the collections, and Emma Hansen, Laura Schloemann, Raoul Leitner, Aliena Stuerzer and Marie Queste who provided quality assurance work on the scans and translations and researched valuable website content.
As we continue to enhance, expand and refine this resource we would welcome your feedback. If you would like to pass on your comments or suggestions, please contact the Library at testimonies@wienerholocaustlibrary.org.