Preserving history

One of the central planks of the mission of the Wiener Library in London is to preserve the legacy of the refugee community which the AJR represents and supports. Because of this close alignment with our own mission, the AJR has been a longstanding supporter of the Library’s programmes and activities. The AJR played a critical role in making possible the Library’s relocation from Devonshire Street to Russell Square in 2011. By relocating to the heart of academic London and to one of the most visited parts of the capital, the Library has undergone a sea-change – attracting many more visitors, accumulating important new collections and regularly staging public exhibitions and events which reflect the experiences and interests of the survivor and refugee communities. In its new location, the AJR has enthusiastically supported the Library’s work to digitise substantial parts of its collections and make them available to the public. This more public-facing approach of the library has also been demonstrated through exhibitions such as A Bitter Road: Britain and the Refugee Crisis of the 1930s and 1940s, which not only told the stories typical of Jewish refugees, but raised important questions about attitudes to refugees today. ͞None of this would have been possible without the incredible friendship of the AJR and its members,͟ writes Ben Barkow, Director of the Wiener Library. The AJR’s support has also made possible the Library’s ongoing collaborative work relating to the archives of the International Tracing Service. The 30 million documents in this collection are an invaluable resource to those researching the fate of individual victims of Nazi persecution.