Open Access Sources

This page is a work-in-progress and will be updated regularly. Last update: November 2, 2024

All sources listed are or have been available open-access; if the links have decayed, try the Wayback Machine (archive.org). 

 For an overview of archival holdings in general, see the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure portal

 For a listing of secondary literature see the page Open Access Holocaust Secondary Literature

Unpublished Sources (Digital Archives)


USA - National Archives

USA 


United Kingdom

Germany

Germany - Bundesarchiv

The list above highlights the more important record groups and is not exhaustive. The "Digitalisierte Bestände" landing page lists record groups with at least 10 files digitised, the groups linked above mostly have more than this, ranging from 15 to several thousand.  Most of the military records linked above have been digitised in full (barring some map files). NS- and R-records vary significantly in the stage of digitisation. 

Arolsen Archives

The former International Tracing Service at Arolsen, Germany uploaded 13 million pages of documents to its website in May 2019, which can be browsed by record group or searched here. 

Keyword searches (names of places, regions and institutions) but also terms such as Sonderbehandlung) will reveal much.

Section 1.1 Incarceration Documents contains 11 million pages of documents relating to the major concentration camps and some ghettos. Records are divided by camp into general information, lists, documents on individuals and card indexes, combining wartime documents (death books, transport lists etc) and postwar compilations, reports and witness statements, overwhelmingly in German. 700,000 pages relate to Auschwitz, 4.7 million pages to Buchenwald, 1.1 million to Mauthausen, nearly 200,000 to Theresienstadt, and so on. When browsing the hierarchical tree, look for yellowed-out numbers in the top right hand corner of a file description; this indicates that the documents have been scanned and uploaded.

Section 1.2 Miscellanous contains transport lists as well as copies of important documents on deportations, shootings and anti-Jewish policies in occupied Europe.

Section 2 Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees by Public Institutions, Social Securities and Companies (1939 - 1947) is now also largely digitised, and contains extensive records on foreign workers and forced labour inside Germany and Austria, with a total of 7.9 million pages of documents.

Europe
Poland
Israel

Yad Vashem Document Archive

The catalogue of the Yad Vashem Document Archive includes numerous fully or partially digitised collections - click on link on this page to access the catalogue with a stable search engine. Accretions and uploads take place several times a year. The advanced search function can limit searches by language, thus it's possible to search specific record groups such as the O.33 Testimonies collection for English-language testimonies only; it's also possible to search for keywords across the archive by language. Most scanned and uploaded files are presented as JPEG folders.

A non-exhaustive list of record groups with digitised files uploaded is itemised below. Record groups indexed in the catalogue without digitised files are generally not included. Well over 20,000 files have been digitised and uploaded hitherto - several collections listed below contain over 1,000 files.

File counts as of 27 January 2018

M.1 Central Historical Commission, Munich (over 3,000 files)
M.2 Ignacy Schwarzbart papers (807 files)
M.4 Rescue Committee (Vaad Hahatzalah) of the Jewish Agency for Eretz Israel (219 files)
M.5 Slovakia (192 files)
M.7 World Jewish Congress-Relico (over 1000 files)
M.9 Linz Documentation Centre (i.e. Simon Wiesenthal; 833 files)
M.11 Bialystok ghetto archive (391 files)
M.16 Coordination Committee of Dutch Jewry in Switzerland (58 files)
M.17 Polish Jewish Refugee Fund, Geneva (1933-1940; 28 files)
M.18 World Jewish Congress-Central Location Index
M.20 Abraham Silberschein collection (241 files)
M.22 Belgian Jewish Committee (Comite Juif Belge), London - 10 files
M.26 World Jewish Congress-Stockholm
M.38 DoeW Vienna (670 files)
M.41 Belarus
M.49 Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw (189 files so far)
M.52 Ukrainian archives (100s of files digitised hitherto)
M.69 Austrian archives
O.1 K.J. Ball-Kaduri - Collection of Testimonies and Reports of German Jewry (c.238 files)
O.2 Wiener Library testimonies (44 of 1171 files digitised)
O.3 Testimonies (19,908 files indexed, only some digitised)
O.4 Trials (4 files)
O.5 Friedman collection
O.6 Poland (up to 1740 files)
O.7 Czechoslovakia (610 files) divided into O.7cz and O.7sl
O.8 Germany (ca. 582 files)
O.9 France (557 files)
O.10 Yugoslavia (ca. 315 files)
O.11 Romania (ca. 512 files)
O.12 Perlman Collection - Refugees from Poland (65 files)
O.13 Bulgaria (78 files)
O.15 E DEGOB testimonies (German and Hungarian)
O.18 Yitzhak Stone collection of Nazi documents (264 files)
O.21 Michal Weichert papers (43 files)
O.23 Gustave Gilbert collection (42 files, IMT-related)
O.27 Denmark with some files re: Norway (102 files)
O.28 Joint Distribution Committee Cracow (1939-41) - 7 files
O.29 Belgium (c. 125 files)
O.30 Austria (232 files)
O.31 Italy (191 files)
O.32 Soviet Union (570 files)
O.33 Testimonies and memoirs (4293 files; 891 files with English materials)
O.34 N. Zonabend Collection about the Lodz Ghetto (762 files)
O.37 Displaced Persons Collection (Sheerit Hapletah) - 333 files
O.39 Collection of Memoirs Written for the Yad Vashem Competition (144 files)
O.40 Netherlands (212 files, now down to 36)
O.41 Lists (transport lists, etc)
O.48 Miscellaneous (72 files)
O.51 Nazi documents (includes a set of Einsatzgruppen reports; 492 files)
O.53 Documents from ZStLudwigsburg (c. 99 files)
O.62 Borwicz collection (461 of 545 files digitised)
O.64 Theresienstadt Collection (c. 222 files digitised)
O.65 Jacob Robinson papers (87 files)
O.68 Berlin Document Center personnel files (only a few uploaded)
O.70 Rosensaft Bergen-Belsen Archive (91 files)
O.71 Koniuchowsky Collection of Testimonies from Lithuania (Yiddish with some translations)
O.75 Letters and Postcards Collection (3,215 files)
O.76 Songs and Poems Collection (391 files)
O.80 Jews in Latvia museum (130 files)
O.82 Baltics (90 files)
O.91 Mordechai Friedman collection (44 files)
P.3 Isaac Weissman Archive (Representative of the W.J.C. in Lisbon) - 16 files
P.4 Dr. Eliezer Yerushalmi Collection: Documentation from the Siauliai Ghetto (9 files)
P.6 Wilhelm Filderman Archive (166 files)
P.7 Marc Jarblum Archive (Underground Leader, France) - 60 files
P.9 Siegfried Jaegendorf Archive (47 files)
P.10 Mark Dworzecki collection (165 files)
P.12 Chaim Pazner papers (141 files)
P.13 Benjamin Sagalowitz papers (203 files)
P.16 Rachel Auerbach papers (110 files)
P.18 Kaczerginski Collection: Documentation regarding the Vilna Ghetto, 1941-1954
P.19 Carl Lutz Collection (33 files; Budapest '44-45)
P.21 Ilya Ehrenburg papers (597 files)
P.25 Erich Kulka papers (73 files)
P.26 Heiner Lichtenstein papers (158 files)
P.32 Joel and Hansi Brand Archive (54 files)
P.41 Oskar Schindler Collection (38 files)
P.49 Leni Yahil Personal Archive (62 files)
P.52 Yehuda Bauer papers (251 files)
P.54 Israel Kasztner archive (61 files)
TR.3 Eichmann trial documents
TR.4 Manstein trial (50 files)
TR.10 Trials (10 cases often with multiple sub-folders)
TR.19 Bovensiepen case (228 files)

Russia and Ukraine
Unpublished Sources (Digital Exhibitions)


 Published Primary Sources - Series

Published Primary Sources - Individual Titles


Memoirs, Testimonies and Oral History Interviews

Newspapers, Serials and Radio

See also Wikipedia's useful List of Online Newspaper Archives
Contemporary Publications

1 comment:

  1. PiklemanThursday, April 04, 2024 10:22:00 pm

    Could you guys add this source as well?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8343952/

    It's a genetic paper confirming that the vast majority of the dead at Sobibor are indeed Jewish, confirming a genocide of Jews as opposed to just atrocities (though regular atrocities were also carried out).

    ReplyDelete

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