The Wiener Holocaust Library, located in London, has launched a new digital resource, Testifying to the Truth, which is now freely accessible online. This online database shares eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust, many of which have never been available to the public online before and have been translated, by a team of the Library’s volunteers, into English for the first time.

Topics covered by the eyewitness accounts range from descriptions of the experience of living through Nazi ghettos, concentration and death camps, to the stories of those who hid from the Nazis, either in plain sight using false identities, or in attics and cellars. The authors were Jewish, Roma and Sinti survivors as well as those who witnessed Nazi persecution. There are also several testimonies from those who participated in resistance activities against the Nazis and their collaborators and those who managed to escape from the death camps.

In recent years, there has been more attention for early Holocaust testimonies. The Wiener Holocaust Library also contributed to the EHRI Online Edition Early Holocaust Testimony.

Visit and search Testifying to the Truth

Image: Jewish refugee girls passing through UK customs from a Kindertransport, December 1938. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections