Helping ensure full and open access to archival Holocaust collections by increasing awareness, creating a forum for cooperation, and establishing guidelines to help those working in and using archives.
Learn about the Project’s approach and activities.
Launched in 2020, the IHRA’s Monitoring Access to Holocaust Collections Project is addressing:
Ensuring full and open access to Holocaust archives is not a niche issue—it is essential to safeguarding the record of the Holocaust, and creating open and democratic societies.
The IHRA presented its resource on advancing access to Holocaust-related archival material to leading archival experts at the extraordinary European Board of National Archivists/European Archives Group (EBNA/EAG) conference on “Archives and the culture of remembrance.”
Artist Malva Schalek’s story showing art as a form of resistance during the Holocaust became the focus of a short film, “Find Your Answers,” commissioned by the IHRA Project on Monitoring Access to Holocaust Collections.
Archives play a major role in addressing the great challenges of today. They shape how we think about the past and provide the nuance and knowledge that form the foundation for an inclusive future.
On 23 March 2022 the IHRA held a Zoom Webinar launching the recently adopted IHRA Guidelines for Identifying Relevant Documentation for Holocaust Research, Education and Remembrance.
This current project builds upon the findings of the IHRA’s Archival Access Project of 2014–2017. One outcome of this project was the adoption of the IHRA’s working definition of Holocaust-related materials.
The Monitoring Access to Holocaust Collections IHRA Project has made building partnerships and strengthening networks central to its approach.
The Project’s work is carried out by an international and interdisciplinary team of experts:
Veerle Vanden Daelen (AWG/Belgium, Project Chair), Micaela Procaccia (MMWG/Italy, Deputy Project Chair), David Matas (Canada), Wesley Fisher (Claims Conference), Margarida Lages (Portugal), Nevena Bajalica (MMWG/Serbia), Rebecca Boehling (USHMM/USA), Anat Bratman-Elhalel (MMWG/Israel), Masha Pollak Rozenberg (AWG/Israel), Naida-Michal Brandl (AWG/Croatia), Haim Gertner (Yad Vashem/Israel), and Michael Hollmann (EBNA/Germany).
The Project is also working closely with the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), the European Board of National Archivists (EBNA), the European Archives Group (EAG), and the International Council of Archives (ICA).
Its work builds off of the Access to Archives IHRA Project, which ran from 2012–2015.
