Jewish Studies Primary Source Collections

ADL’s Tracker of Anti-Semitic Incidents is a compilation of recent cases of anti-Jewish vandalism, harassment, and assault reported to or detected by ADL. This list is not exhaustive and incidents in the Tracker may be removed if they are determined not credible upon further investigation by ADL.

"The Arolsen Archives are an international center on Nazi persecution with the world’s most extensive collection of documents about the victims and survivors of National Socialism. The documents relate to the various groups persecuted by the Nazi regime and contain references to around 17.5 million people, making them an important source of knowledge for society today. Many of the around 30 million documents are now available in the Online Archive of the Arolsen Archives. The number of searchable names and keywords is growing all the time."

"The Documenting White Supremacy and Its Opponents collection includes papers promoting and opposing white supremacy, published mainly in the 1920s. It brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the US. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities."

The Duane Mezga Holocaust Sites photograph collection consists of 682 digitized Kodachrome 64 color slides. Almost all of the photographs were taken in 1992, of concentration camps and other historically significant sites related to the Holocaust. Twenty-one sites in Austria, then-Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland are included. The photographs were taken using the progressive-realization technique, which captures the experience of walking through a site. Memorials present at these sites were a focus of the documentation.

"The Fortunoff Archive currently holds more than 4,400 testimonies, which are comprised of over 12,000 recorded hours of videotape. Testimonies were produced in cooperation with thirty-six affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe, and Israel. The Fortunoff Archive and its affiliates recorded the testimonies of willing individuals with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including those who were in hiding, survivors, bystanders, resistants, and liberators. Testimonies were recorded in whatever language the witness preferred, and range in length from 30 minutes to over 40 hours (recorded over several sessions)."

Documents the trial of David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt.

"The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is the definitive, trusted global source of news and analysis on issues of Jewish interest and concern. Our reporting reflects the wide spectrum of religious, political and cultural identity that exists among Jews today. With correspondents in New York, Washington, Israel, Europe and cities around the globe, JTA provides extensive coverage of political, economic and social developments affecting Jews all over the world. Since its founding in 1917, JTA has earned a reputation for journalistic integrity, outstanding reporting and insightful analysis. JTA also serves as an international syndication service for more than 70 Jewish publications and websites that depend on JTA for Jewish news outside of their local community."

"This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, photographs and interactive features."

This digital collection contains a complete set hand-colored lithographs published as Musée des Horreurs, and hand-colored lithographs published as Musée des Patriotes. The lithographs feature caricatures of various individuals involved in the Dreyfus Affair in France.

"The Nizkor Project is an Internet-based project run by B'nai Brith Canada which is dedicated to countering Holocaust denial. B’nai Brith has had a presence in Canada since its earliest days, with roots stretching back to 1875. Contains images, documents, and reports of concentration camps, the Nuremburg Trials, and Holocaust deniers."

The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project is an open-access initiative to create and present digitized images or full-text versions of the Library's Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document, and general information about the trials.

The bibliographies "list only materials that are in the Museum Library’s collection or available online. They are not meant to be exhaustive. In most cases, annotations are provided to help the user determine each item’s focus, and call numbers for the Museum’s Library are given in parentheses following each citation."

"In 1946, Dr. David P. Boder, a psychology professor from Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology, traveled to Europe to record the stories of Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Over a period of three months, he visited refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, carrying a wire recorder and 200 spools of steel wire, upon which he was able to record over 90 hours of first-hand testimony. These recordings represent the earliest known oral histories of the Holocaust, which are available through this online archive."

“The Wiener Library is one of the world's leading and most extensive archives on the Holocaust and Nazi era. Formed in 1933, the Library's unique collection of over one million items includes published and unpublished works, press cuttings, photographs and eyewitness testimony.”

“The Holocaust Resource Center provides you with easy access to in-depth information about the Holocaust. The Center has a large collection of sources from the Yad Vashem Archives, including various kinds of original Holocaust-era documentation provided in English including letters and diaries written by Jews during the Holocaust, numerous photographs and original documents. The Holocaust Resource Center serves as a repository for the collection of the testimonies of Holocaust survivors that have been collected at Yad Vashem over the years, as well as excerpts from memoirs written by survivors after the war. The Resource Center supports this collection of primary sources with excerpts from research studies, as well as, works of art, and historical maps and charts and a collection of artifacts from Yad Vashem's museum collection.”

"Yizkor (memorial) books document the history of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Most often privately published and compiled through the collective efforts of former community residents, they describe daily life through essays and photographs and memorialize murdered residents. Most yizkor books are in Hebrew and/or Yiddish, although more English translations have been published in online and print format. NYPL’s yizkor book collection now includes about 730 yizkor books."