EHRI Workshops (2010-2015)

An overview of EHRI workshops from phase 1 (2010-2015) is listed below.

You can read about previous EHRI workshops and their results in the e-Newsletter for Experts in Holocaust Documentation, or the News items.

Holocaust Art – An Essential Tool for the Methodology of Constructing a Historical Narrative

Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 9-11 February, 2015

International Workshop within the Framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), supported by the European Commission

We would like to invite you to participate in the international workshop on Holocaust Art to be held at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem on 9-11 February, 2015.

The workshop is organized within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project, supported by the European Commission. Launched in November 2010, EHRI is dedicated to opening up collections related to Holocaust history within a web-based environment with the purpose of generating a creative exchange of knowledge and views between professionals in various subfields of Holocaust research and documentation.

Workshop rationale

"By his very function, the artist is the witness of freedom…. By his function he is engaged in the density of history, where man’s very flesh stifles."

Albert Camus, "The Artist as Witness of Freedom: The Independent Mind in an Age of Ideologies", Commentary Magazine, January 1949

Camus' words quoted above assert the unique role of the recording of history by artists. Camus does not limit his observation to the visual arts; however, his emphasis on the negation of the abstract idols places the visual arts in a proper context, implying their unique role.

Following this preamble, the ethical role of the witnesses of Holocaust atrocities have manifested in their commitment to record for the generations to come, forcing us to confront the horrors with our own eyes. By facing reality via the visual arts, the Holocaust no longer can be defined as indescribable; it constitutes a reaffirmation of the human experience by the mostly Jewish victims.

Visual account

This workshop is dedicated to the role of the visual arts in the attempt to build a historical narrative. Through an array of approaches, we will examine this phenomenon; namely, the subjective and objective inherent qualities of the artistic manifestation, which affords a vantage point to history not provided by any other tool. We will be examining art not as an embellishment, a beautification or an illustrative agent; but rather as, at times, the one and only visual account of an historical event.

With the advance of time and the introduction of photography, art was given a lower case presence in the recording of the annals.

Integrating the visual

Indeed these visuals, at times intimate and fragile, and extremely personal, are to be viewed as important documents, written by means of artistic expression rather than with words. They are there for us to decipher and use as a most valuable tool for comprehending the inconceivable reality of the Holocaust.

When this approach is validated, then we are faced with the mission of building a comprehensive methodology for integrating the visual into research and education about the Holocaust. The workshop will promote a discussion on seeking the means and ways of implementing this approach in museums, classrooms and research.

"And they (the artists) will then know that this singular vocation creates for them the most overwhelming of brotherhoods, which, through all the ages of the intelligence, has never stopped struggling to affirm against the abstractions of history that which exceeds history, and that is the flesh, be it suffering or be it happy." Albert Camus, Ibid.

Read more about this EHRI workshop and how to participate in the Call for Papers. The deadline for submissions of proposals is December 22, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be sent via email by January 10, 2015. This call is closed.

The Challenges of Publishing Finding Aids in a Digitally Joined-Up World

EHRI workshop at DANS, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2-3 December

EHRI set out to support the European Holocaust research community and to help initiate new levels of collaborative research through the development of innovative methodologies, research guides and user-driven transnational access to research infrastructures and services. To this end, EHRI has designed and implemented a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) offering online access to dispersed key Holocaust archival materials and to a number of online tools to work with them.The VRE and online portal will be launched in March 2015.

Metadata policies

Responsible for designing and implementing a central metadata repository to store metadata about the disparate and dispersed collections was the Data Integration Infrastructure team. Close cooperation with archives and other collection holding institutions was required for access to their metadata. The integration of metadata has shown to be complicated, not so much for technical problems, as for organizational challenges. In many cases it proved to be unclear what policies applied to metadata and who was responsible for them.

Improve collaboration

This EHRI workshop will focus on the information policy required in a digitally joined-up world and is intended for people responsible for the information strategy at archives, museums, libraries and other institutions that hold collections. It is not a technical workshop. The objective of the workshop is to improve the collaboration between the collection holding institutions, IT-service providers and Information Customers, such as EHRI.

Information and registration

For more details and information, you can email Gaithrie Ganesh, gaithrie.ganesh@dans.knaw.nl.

A maximum of 15 persons can participate in the workshop. A maximum of two persons per organization can attend.

Registration is on the basis of first come first serve and is possible till 10 November 2014 via: Gaithrie Ganesh, email: gaithrie.ganesh@dans.knaw.nl. Registration is closed.

Programme

Day 1

1. Welcome
2. Introduction
3. EHRI Portal
4. Computers are Users too
5. Case Studies

Day 2

1. Break-out sessions
2. Feedback
3. Sustainable Publishing
4. Wrap-up

Overcoming the Gap: Eastern Perspectives on EHRI

EHRI Workshop at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest

Thu 6 November 2014. Time: 9.30am - 1.00pm

This workshop is organized by the Hungarian National Archives and the Holocaust Memorial Center (Budapest) and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam).

We would like to cordially invite you to the workshop Overcoming the Gap: Eastern Perspectives on EHRI, hosted by the EHRI partner Holocaust Memorial Center. The workshop will offer an overview on EHRI's work and progress, featuring speakers from key areas of the collaboration's development. Besides, the workshop focuses on the Eastern expansion of EHRI, involving colleagues representing leading institutions in the field from Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) works to integrate the collections of various Holocaust institutions across Europe into an accessible online portal. EHRI also encourages collaboration in research across various fields of interest. In March 2015, EHRI will introduce its main achievement: an online portal that gives access to dispersed sources relating to the Holocaust.

Programme:

Welcoming remarks: Prof. György Haraszti, Chairman of the Board at the Holocaust Memorial Center
Dr László Csősz (Hungarian National Archives, Budapest), Overcoming the Gap: Eastern Perspectives on EHRI/Introduction
Giles Bennett (IfZ, Münich), Bringing Together the Scattered Evidence - Holocaust-Related Archival Descriptions Across Europe
Dr Reto Speck (Kings College, London/NIOD, Amsterdam), Building Infrastructures for Archives in a Digital World: the EHRI Portal
Barbara Hutzelmann (Editionsprojekt “Judenverfolgung 1933-1945”, Munich), Overview about the State of Holocaust Research and the Archives in Slovakia
Alexandru Climescu (Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania, Bucharest), The Evolution of Holocaust Research and Documentation in Romania
Wolfgang Schellenbacher (Jewish Museum in Prague), Research Guides: Displaying Archival Information-from Dispersed Data Sources to a Unified and User-friendly Service

The workshop will be followed by a sandwich lunch.

Useful Information

Admission: Free but booking is essential as space is limited.
Location: Holocaust Memorial Center, 39 Páva Street, Budapest click for map
Registration: EHRIworkshop@gmail.com. Registration is closed.

Early Attempts at the Historical Documentation of the Holocaust

Ocotober 21-23, 2014: an International Workshop at the Jewish Museum in Prague

within the Framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), supported by the European Commission

We would like to invite you to an international workshop on Early Attempts at the Historical Documentation of the Holocaust, to be held at the Jewish Museum in Prague, Czech Republic on October 21-23, 2014.

Thematic focus

The forms, methods and means of the early documentation of the Holocaust are the main focus for this workshop. Participants are expected to provide new insights on the projects to collect evidence about the Holocaust in its immediate aftermath, from the war period up to 1960s. The workshop will promote a comparative perspective and attempt to broaden the scope of research into the documentation initiatives, with special focus on those in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

Over the last few years, much new research has been conducted which has shed new light on the attempts of individuals and groups to collect documents and photos and to record testimonies. Many of these activists were Jewish survivors for whom documentation – at least in some cases – was a way to cope with the murder of their families and communities and a necessary precondition for reconstructing their lives in the shadow of the Shoah. Laura Jockusch and other researchers have explored the often neglected history of Jewish documentation committees, the collectors themselves, as well as results of these initiatives. Without these endeavours, later historians would miss significant pieces of evidence and current historiography of the Holocaust would look different.

In November 2012, EHRI organised an international workshop on early documentation of the Holocaust which was, to our knowledge, the first comparative research meeting on the topic. The fascinating workshop made it clear that more research and discussion is needed.

The upcoming workshop strives to extend the existing research from the following perspectives (while not excluding other relevant subjects):

We wish to further develop the comparative perspective, either by adding new research results to the countries discussed during the previous workshop (Great Britain, France, Israel, USA, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Greece), or by adding results from countries which were not included in the previous workshop, with special attention to Eastern-Central and South-Eastern Europe.
In order to identify the Jewish initiatives on the broader map of the documentation of the World War II, we encourage comparison with other projects, both those initiated by governments as well as those of a more private nature. This may include cooperation with or comparison to the various state-run bodies, as well as the collection of documents with regard to the Nuremberg trials, and other post-war trials. In this way we would like to comparatively determine, among other research questions, in what situations and why Jewish individuals and groups preferred to establish separate Jewish documentation efforts.
Holocaust archives were often created by activists, constructed by people with their own interpretation of the past. We would like to look more closely at the process of construction of the early Holocaust archives and how their content and structure were influenced by the the ideology and methodology of their creators.
We invite participants to focus on the phenomenon of early testimonies, usually in written form and often styled as formalized and signed protocols. We wish to explore the significance of the act of testimony, its languages, as well as the methodology of testimony collection.
As EHRI is putting together a database on Holocaust-relevant archival materials for its portal, the workshop will have a session on the inclusion of archival sources used and/or referred to by the workshop presentors.

Read more about this EHRI workshop and how to participate >> Call for Papers. The deadline for submissions of proposals is July 30, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be sent via email by mid August, 2014. This call is now closed.

Names of Shoah Victims: from Scattered Sources to Individual Personal Stories

October 20-21, 2014: an International Workshop at Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin

within the Framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), supported by the European Commission

EHRI would like to invite you to an international workshop on the Names and Stories of Shoah Victims, to be held at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, on October 20-21, 2014.

This expert meeting is organised within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) programme, supported by the European Commission. EHRI was launched in November 2010, and is dedicated to opening up collections related to Holocaust history within a web-based environment. The overall objective of the EHRI experts' workshops is to generate a creative exchange of knowledge and views between experts in various methodological subfields of Holocaust research and documentation.

A vast amount of work was done in the last decades in order to document and commemorate the names of as many as possible of the Shoah victims. There is still much to be done in order to name each and all of the victims and we will have to stay the course on this mission for yet a long time. Nevertheless, there are already in existence many large and small projects and databases based on a huge array of sources. More and more pressingly now we are facing another kind of challenge: the need to make sense of the abundance of data, to organize it and cluster together, when available, the multiple pieces and bits of information referring to one and the same victim. This means rising up from the level of the flat separate data items to that of a relational system linking them in a virtual personal file, sometimes eventually resulting, as far as possible, in reconstructing a brief personal life story.

Participants are invited to present their findings and projects that focus on, in particular, methodology for and experience with identifying and matching documentary references relevant to one same victim, linking them and building clusters as well as presenting them in an articulated and meaningful way either in print or in a digital framework. Also of much interest would be new or non-traditional sources that have the potential to supply additional data that can be used to enrich and enhance the existing information on scantily documented individuals.

Hence, the Call for Papers is directed to historians and archivists, to researchers in the field of names databases and onomastics, as well as representatives of other related disciplines.

The planned EHRI archives and research portal will enable researchers to obtain knowledge about Holocaust-related fonds and collections in archives all over Europe. Widely scattered documents can be virtually rearranged according to their original provenances and material pertaining to specific topics can be brought together by interested researchers on their virtual desks. The conjunction of sources of information and of information itself about events, persons and locations in the context of the Holocaust is partly conditioned by the necessity of reconstructing and high lining the links between sources at the basic level of the individual victim.

This workshop will serve as a venue for representatives of various scientific disciplines to exchange ideas, with the goal of providing new incentives for Holocaust research, specifically in the application of methods for the micro personal history to the study of the Holocaust.

Read more about this EHRI workshop and how to participate >> Call for Papers. The deadline for submissions of proposals is June 15, 2014. Notification of acceptance will be sent via email by 15 July, 2014. This call is now closed.

Heritage and Memory: Revising Scopes and Means of Physical and Digital Preservation of Holocaust Documentation

8-10 September, 2014: an International Workshop at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

within the Framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI), supported by the European Commission

EHRI would like to invite you to participate in the international workshop on Revising the Scope and Means of Physical and Digital Preservation of Holocaust Documentation to be held at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, September, 8-10, 2014.

The dramatic developments in digital technology and their application in various disciplines have an increasing impact on conservation and preservation of cultural heritage and primary sources: documents, photographs, artwork and artifacts. Indeed, the digital surrogate represents considerable advantages; it circumvents the necessity of accessing the original thus preventing its deterioration by physical contact or exposure to uncontrolled environment. The new technology media provide an effective and simple worldwide dissemination of information; it improves the potential for both academic research and household, and enhances the elaboration of visual data through the application of advanced spectral imaging technologies.

However, this growing use of digital media requires a particular and closer examination of its eventual effect on preserving the Holocaust memory and heritage.

Even today, almost seven decades since the end of the war, our information on the victims of the Shoah and the fates of individuals and communities remains very incomplete. The Nazis made a determined effort not only to murder the Jews but to obliterate their memory as well. Holocaust documentation is the basis for Holocaust research, the core material for the production of museums and exhibits, and a resource base for commemoration activities and education for future generations. These building blocks of memory are scattered across the world, in countless fragments. They were written in hiding, under difficult conditions, with poor materials. Part of the material was in private hands for many decades, not always in adequate conditions. This sensitive documentation is often the last testimony to the life of an individual, or to the execution of murder; therefore preservation has significant moral, educational and legal implications. At the same time, there is a broadening understanding in the world that Holocaust documentation needs to be made accessible to the wide public via advanced technology, precisely because of the great interest expressed by the public.

Preservation of Holocaust documentation as a test case can present professionals in the field with a window to a discussion on questions that concern conservators worldwide. Developments and dilemmas that concern those dealing with the preservation of cultural heritage in general impact on the decision making process of leaders in preservation of Holocaust documentation.

This workshop will address the challenges surrounding the intrinsic importance of the original material and the need to preserve it alongside with the digital image. It will therefore emphasize the particular importance of assuring the appropriate means and skills for preserving the physical material, of updating the technologies for the digital conservation and backup, and finally, define and establish the complementary role of each one of the conservation processes.

Read more about this EHRI workshop and how to participate >> Call for Papers. The deadline for submissions of proposals is, June 30, 2014.Notification of acceptance will be sent via email by mid July, 2014. This call is now closed.

From Dispersed and Fragmented Holocaust Sources to an Integrated European Research Infrastructure

EHRI Workshop at Le Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris

Mon 2 June 2014. Time: 9.45am - 5.30pm

We would like to invite you to a workshop about the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) at Le Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris on Monday 2 June, 2014. Le Mémorial de la Shoah is a partner of EHRI.

In March 2015, EHRI will introduce its main achievement: an online portal that gives access to dispersed sources relating to the Holocaust. Before this launch, the EHRI workshop at Le Mémorial de la Shoah will present the first results of the project to historians, researchers and the interested public in France. The workshop will give you a first insight and preview of the outcome of the project and how it will support Holocaust research.

Speakers include important members of the EHRI team, i.a. Conny Kristel, project director, and Renée Poznanski from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

See the programme: EHRI Workshop Paris (in French).

EHRI is funded by the European Union and was launched in November 2010. The project is dedicated to opening up collections related to Holocaust history within a web-based environment. EHRI helps researchers to overcome one of the major challenges facing Holocaust research: the fact that the research materials are dispersed across Europe. Supporting a network of Holocaust researchers is just as important to EHRI as creating a digital infrastructure. Therefore EHRI also organises summer schools, an online course in Holocaust studies, fellowships, expert meetings, conferences and workshops.

The workshop will be conducted in French and English.

Lunch and a tour of Mémorial de la Shoah are included.

Admission: Free but booking is essential as space is limited.

Location: Le Mémorial de la Shoah, 17 rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, Paris - click for map

How to book: Registration is no longer possible.

Please visit the website of Le Mémorial de la Shoah for more information (in French).

From Data to Knowledge: How the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure links and opens Holocaust collections to all

EHRI Workshop at the Wiener Library, London

Fri 11 April 2014. Time: 9.30am - 1.00pm

We would like to invite you to a workshop about the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) at The Wiener Library For the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide on 11 April. The Wiener Library is a partner of EHRI.

In March 2015, EHRI will introduce its main achievement: an online portal that gives access to dispersed sources relating to the Holocaust. Before this launch, the EHRI workshop at the Wiener Library will present the first results of the project to historians, researchers and the interested public. The workshop will give you a first insight and preview of the outcome of the project and how it will support Holocaust research.

Speakers:

Ben Barkow (Wiener Library), Introduction
Dr Laszlo Csosz (Holocaust Memorial Center, Hungary), Overcoming the Gap: Eastern Perpectives on EHRI
Dr. Veerle vanden Daelen (CEGES-SOMA, Belgium), Bringing in the data - EHRI's identification and investigation work
Miriam Haardt (Wiener Library), The EHRI-Thesaurus - an access tool for dispersed sources?
Dr Reto Speck (Kings College London), The EHRI Portal: Integrated access to dispersed sources and collaborative tools

The workshop will be followed by a sandwich lunch.

Admission: Free but booking is essential as space is limited.

Location: The Wiener Library, 29 Russell Square, London - click for map

How to book: Registration is no longer possible.

Please visit the website of The Wiener Library for more information.

Geography and Holocaust Research

27-29 May 2013: An International Workshop at the International Tracing Service (ITS), Bad Arolsen, Germany

Within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

The overall objective of the EHRI experts' workshop is to generate a creative exchange of knowledge and views between experts in various methodological subfields of Holocaust research and documentation.

Geographic aspects of events and processes, landscape, environment, traffic routes, and more all impacted on plans and actions in the context of the Holocaust. The examination of geographic characteristics and the application of geographical methods to historical research of the Holocaust are, of course, not new. New technologies and interdisciplinary approaches, however, provide new and additional methods to convey and visualise relationships between paremeters that affected the sequence of actvities and events throughout history.

Participants are invited to present their findings and projects that focus on, in particular, the use of geographical components of interdisciplinary research in the context of the Holocaust. These findings and projects should either pertain directly to Holocaust research or should present an impetus for the integration of geographical methodologies into historical research in general. Hence the Call for Papers is directed to historians and archivists, as well as geographers and representatives of related disciplines.

The planned EHRI archives and research portal will enable researchers to obtain knowledge about Holocaust-related fonds and collections in archives all over Europe. Widely scattered documents can be virtually rearranged according to their original provenances and material pertaining to specific topics can be brought together by interested researchers on their virtual desks. The conjunction of sources of information and of information intself about events, persons and locations in the context of the Holocaust is partly conditioned by the necessity of illustrating historical and actual geographic relationships which extend to the whole of Europe. Therefore, tools for evaluating geographic information and the content and technological facilities provided by an online portal such as EHRI should get special attention.

This workshop will serve as a venue for representatives of various scientific disciplines to exchange ideas, with the goal of providing new incentives for Holocaust research, specifically in the application of geographical methods to the study of the Holocaust.

Proposals are now invited for individual presentations or participation in round table discussions. This workshop will be conducted in English.

Read more about this workshop and participation >> Call for Papers. The deadline for submissions of proposals is December 31st, 2012. This call is now closed.

Early Attempts at the Historical Documentation of the Holocaust

27-28 November 2012: An International Workshop at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest, Hungary

Within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

The overall objective of the EHRI experts' workshops is to generate a creative exchange of knowledge and views between experts in various methodological subfields of Holocaust research and documentation. Participants are invited to present their findings pertaining to the early attempts to document the mass destruction of European Jews during WWII in a comparative perspective.

The overall aim of EHRI, to connect and to make accessible Holocaust-related archival material, raises the principal issue of the origins of these collections. In order to understand the structure, contents, and historical value of the sources preserved in European archives and other documentation centers, we must explore who created these collections and how they were created: what were the political circumstances, resources and motivations surrounding these early documentary projects. The workshop aims to provide a comparative perspective on early Jewish and non-Jewish documentary projects, including historical commissions that collected documents and conducted interviews with Holocaust survivors. The significance of this theme lies in discussing the archives not as definite, stable and objective sets of documents, but as (partly) constructed entities.

Proposals are now invited for individual presentations or participation in round table discussions.

Read more about this workshop and participation >> Call for Papers. This call is now closed.

The workshop is planned to coincide in topic and timing with the annual Simon Wiesenthal Conference of EHRI partner the Wiener Wiesenthal Institute (VWI) entitled Before the Holocaust had its name. Early Confrontations of the Nazi Mass Murder of the Jews, taking place in Vienna on November 29 - December 1, 2012. >> www.vwi.ac.at

Truth and Witness

30 April - 2 May 2012: An International Workshop on Holocaust Testimonies

Within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

We would like to invite you to an international workshop to be held at The Wiener Library, London, in April/May 2012 on Holocaust Testimonies.

Written and oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors, along with personal documentation such as letters and diaries, can provide information and details otherwise unavailable in the numerous official sources concerning the persecution and murder of the Jews. Consequently, the use of these sources has both practical and ethical imperatives - testimony can add telling details, and it can also allow the individual characters of the victims to emerge. However, the many survivor testimonies that are now available have all been collected at different times, and often in very different contexts. This can make them problematic and challenging when used as a source of historical evidence.

This workshop will focus on some core issues currently facing researchers, archivists and scholars across all disciplines and collection-holding institutions. In reviewing some of the many testimony collections and works undertaken in the past 65 years, we hope to reflect on the content, structure and form of the survivor testimonies.

Read more about this workshop and participation >> Call for Papers. This call is now closed.

The Holocaust and the (Digital) Photographic Documentation

19-21 September 2011: International Workshop at NIOD, Amsterdam

Within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) intends to organize an international expert meeting in which the place of photography in historical research of the Holocaust will be discussed. The meeting aims to comibine the growing academic interest in photography with the increasing digitisation and opening up of photographic archives. The overall aim is to generate a creative exchange between researchers on the many aspects of the photographic representation of the Holocaust. Archivists of picture collections and e-scientists will be invited to discuss how EHRI can fulfill its purpose of creating a European research infrastructure, focussing on the photographic represenatation of the Holocaust.

Researchers and experts working in the fields described in this call are invited to submit proposals for papers to be discussed at the expert meeting. The deadline will be June 1st 2011. Everyone who has submitted a proposal will be notified about acceptance or refusal by July 1st 2011.

Please click here to view the Call for Papers. This call is now closed.

'Recording the Names'

4-6 July 2011: International Workshop for Names Computerization Experts

Within the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI)

The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem is the Jewish People's memorial to each and every Jew that perished in the Holocaust.

Between 3 and 6 July 2011 Yad Vashem in Israel will host the first of many EHRI workshops that are open to participants from outside the consortium. For 'Recording the Names' Yad Vashem intends to invite about twenty representatives from different institutions that deal with computerization of the names of Naze vitcims to participate in this international workshop.

Read more and view the programme. This call is now closed.