Jewish Archives in Europe

Jump to:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Croatia
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Estonia
• France
• Germany
• Great Britain
• Greece
• Hungary
• Italy
• Lithuania
• The Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Romania
• Russia
• Spain

Also see archival projects:

• Yerusha will be an online searchable database of archival materials related to Jewish history and culture in archives across Europe.
• Judaica Europeana seeks to digitize archives and libraries across Europe.

Austria

• The Jewish Museum in Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien) holds personal and organizational files related to the history of Jews in Vienna. They also have the records of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish community of Vienna).

Belgium

• The Jewish Museum of Belgium (Musée Juif de Belgique / Joods museum van België) has 300 linear meters of documents, from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes several hundred private collections, archives of Jewish organizations, and documents related to the museum. See a list of collections (in French). It also has more than 6,000 digitized photographs, which are searchable online.

Croatia

• The Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade (Jevrejski istorijski muzej) holds 1000 linear meters of archival materials. Consult a list of archive collections.

Czech Republic

• The Jewish Museum in Prague (Židovské muzeum v Praze) has 600 linear meters of archives relating to Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia. Also includes patents, circulars, ordinances, and decrees, with seals, stamps, etc. The oldest document is from 1454, but most material is from the 18th century until the present. It holds a photo archive with 75,000 negatives and over 500,000 digital images.

Denmark

• The Danish-Jewish Museum (Dansk-jodisk Museum) has an extensive art collection as well as archival materials, mostly from the late nineteenth century to the present. The museum has also developed a research project on the experiences of Danish Jews from 1943-1945. The collection can be searched online.

Estonia

• The Estonian Jewish Museum (Eesti Juudi Muuseum) holds personal and organizational archives, periodicals, and other materials relating to Jewish life in Estonia, mostly from the late nineteenth century to the present. The website holds a detailed archival listing with almost 1500 items.

France

• The Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU), Paris, holds extensive records relating to its activities from 1860 onwards, and documenting Jewish life across the Middle East and North Africa.
• The Consistoire Central (Central Consistory) in Paris holds records relating to the organization of the consistory system from 1808 onwards. The files are in the offices of the consistoire and are available by appointment. Contact: Philippe Laundau, philippe.landau AT consistoirecentral.fr
• The records of the Historical Society of the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine (Société pour l’histoire des israélites d’Alsace et de Lorraine, or SHIAL) are located at the Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin. It includes material relating to the Jews of this border region as well as Switzerland.
• The Archives of the Jewish Consistory of the Lower Rhine (CIBR) have been inventoried since 1997 by SHIAL and the CIBR, coordinated by Peter Honigmann of the Zentralarchiv zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (who himself lives in Strasbourg). There are 7.5 linear meters of materials located in the CIBR offices in Strasbourg.
• The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de documentation juice contemporaine, or CDJC) was established in 1943 to document the Holocaust. The CDJC holds about 30,000,000 documents, including archives of the German military administration in France, German embassy in Paris, Gestapo, Nuremberg trial archives, the Commissariat Généra aux Questions juices (CGQJ), and more.

Germany

• The Arolsen Archives in Bad Arolsen collects materials relating to victims of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. Initially formed in 1948 as the International Tracing Service, today the archive has three main areas: (1) Information on people who were incarcerated by the Nazis in concentration camps, ghettos, etc. (2) Materials relating to employment records and the fate of forced laborers. (3) Documentation relating to survivors and Displaced Persons (DPs).
• The Centrum Judaicum–Neue Synagoge (Berlin) holds files of the former Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden.
• The Central Archive for the Study of the History of Jews in Germany (Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland), at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg, holds an extensive collection of materials on Jewish life in postwar Germany.
• The Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main (Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt) holds 300 linear meters of records and 21,000 photos with a focus on Jews in Frankfurt. Other collections include the files of Paul Arnsberg, Alexander Besser, and Bernhard Brilling.
• The Center for Research on Antisemitism (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, or ZfA) at Technische Universität-Berlin holds extensive archives on antisemitism, Nazism, racism, and also German Jewish history more broadly. They have files from the Nuremberg trials, the archive of the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe (which are also available in microfilm at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City), documentation of Jewish cemeteries in Germany, collections on right wing extremism from the 1980s and 1990s, and more. The ZfA also has access to periodicals and other materials on microfilm.

Great Britain

• The Anglo-Jewish Archives at the University of Southampton, Special Collections holds materials relating to Jewish history in England (outside of materials relating to London’s Jewish communities, which are at the London Metropolitan Archives).
• The Jewish Museum London, founded in 1932 by Cecil Roth, has materials on refugees from the Nazi regime.
• The London Metropolitan Archives holds rich archives on Jewish life in Britain and especially in London, where most British Jews have lived since the seventeenth century. Important collections include the files of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the United Synagogue and the office of the Chief Rabbi, the files of the Bevis Marks synagogue, and materials on the education, Zionism, the Kindertransport, and other topics. Some of the collections have restricted access. The LMA has also produced a detailed research guide on their Jewish communal collections.
• The Rothschild Archive, established in 1978, preserves materials relating to the famous family’s business and philanthropic activities. The bulk of its collections are the business records of N. M. Rothschild & Sons, and papers of the Rothschild family in England, France, and Austria. Business records are available for the period up to 1945. They published a guide to the archive (now available via archive.org).
• The Scottish Jewish Archives Center was established in Glasgow in 1987. They hold minute books and registers of synagogues, membership lists, photographs, oral histories, communal organizations’ reports, personal papers, and more. They have also indexed the 17 Jewish cemeteries in Scotland.
• The Wiener Holocaust Library, former the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO), is an important repository of materials on the Nazi regime.

Greece

• The Jewish Museum of Greece holds archival materials from individuals and organizations as part of their historical collection, which holds rare books, manuscripts, documents, photographs, inscriptions, periodicals, and more. The museum’s World War II and Holocaust collection also has materials from the time of the Holocaust, and its Oral History Archive has testimonies of more than 100 survivors.
  The Jewish Community of Thessaloniki’s archives have been split up; part was deposited in 1970 at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, and part is kept at the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. In 2011, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Claims Conference digitized the materials. Read more about the history of the Thessaloniki archive and the materials contained therein.

Hungary

• The Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives (Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár) in Budapest holds the Hungarian Jewish Archives, which were first established in 1972. It holds Jewish communal and associational records, records of the Central Bureau of Hungarian Jews (Magyarországi Izraeliták Országos Irodája), and more. The online database offers finding aids.

Italy

• The Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, or CDEC) in Milan was formed in 1955; today it holds archival collections on Italian Jewry and the Holocaust, as well as a photographic collection and library.
• The Historical Archive of the Jewish Community of Rome (Archivio Storico della Comunità di Roma “Giancarlo Spizzichino,” or ASCER) holds 284 linear meters of files relating to Rome’s Jewish community and its history. It mainly preserves documentation from the sixteenth century to the Second World War. Israeli archivist Daniel Carpi divided the archive into two collections, relating to the “medieval and modern period” (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries), and to the contemporary period (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). The photographic archive holds about 9,000 images, and the music archive holds 740 scores of liturgical music. Materials in the “medieval and modern” section include records on the Papal states, business activities including lending money at interest and pawn shops, false accusations of ritual murder, forced baptisms, and more. The “contemporary” section includes administrative materials.
• The Renato Maestro Library and Archive (Biblioteca archivio Renato Maestro) in Venice, founded in 1981, holds materials relating to the history of the Jews of Venice and other historical archives. Finding aids are available on the website (in Italian).

Lithuania

• Former YIVO files are held at the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Manuscript Department and the Lithuanian Central State Archives. YIVO is digitizing these materials as part of the Edward Blank Vilna Collections Project.

The Netherlands

• The Jewish Historical Museum (Joods Historisch Museum) contains the Ets Haim library, one of the oldest Jewish libraries in the world, as well as a historical archive and photo collection. Historical achieve collections (which can be browsed online) include family collections, materials from the Second World War, correspondence, and more.

Norway

• The Jewish Museum (Jodiske Museet) in Trondheim (The Jewish museum of Trundheim) has about 10 feet of documents, 8000 photos (many of which are digitized), 113 videos and 65 audio recordings, many of which are interviews with Holocaust survivors. When the museum was formed in 1997, it took over the archive of the synagogue in Trondheim, which is in the same building, including protocols, correspondence, marriage documents and other materials. Over the years the museum has acquired photos and other documents from Jewish families in central and northern Norway.
• The Jewish Museum in Oslo holds correspondence of the Mosaic Congregation and private archives of a few organizations.

Poland

• The Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma (Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw holds extensive archival material on Jewish life in Poland, including the records of Emanuel Ringelblum’s Warsaw ghetto Oyneg shabes archives.

Romania

• The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania (Institute National Pentru Studierea Holocaustului din Romania “Elie Wiesel”), in Bucharest, holds an archive of material relating to the Holocaust in Romania including oral history.
• See also the Archival Survey of Jewish Bukovina and Transylvania

Russia

• Russia holds extensive collections of materials which were looted from Germany during the Second World War

Spain

Spain was one of the earliest places where scholars of Jewish history did archive-based research in the nineteenth century, with E. H. Lindo’s The History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal (1848) demonstrating the rich archival sources relating to Jewish history in Iberia. Later, Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer’s monumental Die Juden in christ lichen Spanien (1929 and 1936) also published tremendous sources on the basis of archival materials of the state and the church.

However, due to the expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492 and the subsequent restrictions on Jewish settlement in Spain and all its overseas territories, there exist few, if any, Jewish communal institutional or archival repositories there today.

With this in mind, scholars interested in Spanish Jewish history can consult various archives in Spain; genealogical societies and others have produced research guides (like this one) on useful archives on the Inquisition and other aspects of Jewish life in Iberia. Also see the research notes at EHRI on Spanish archives holding materials relating to the Holocaust.