Archiv

With approximately 200 linear metres of material covering the period from 1945 to 2015, the Simon Wiesenthal Archive (SWA) is the largest collection in the Archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).

Immediately after being liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal begins searching for Nazi perpetrators in Linz in early summer 1945. The first years of this work are closely linked to providing aid and support for Holocaust survivors. Thousands of survivors are waiting in reception camps for the chance to emigrate. Wiesenthal takes advantage of their temporary presence to conduct systematic interviews with them as witnesses to the crimes and injustices they had suffered. Hundreds are thus referred to US and, soon afterwards, Austrian court proceedings to give testimony.

However, with the mass emigration of survivors beginning in 1948, this chapter is relatively short-lived. Nevertheless, it lays the foundations for Wiesenthal’s lifelong work. In 1956, he transfers a large portion of the material created in Linz to the Yad Vashem archives, where it is still preserved today: a significant part of this material is now accessible online under Record Group M.9. Wiesenthal retains the remaining material and takes it with him to Vienna. Following the establishment of the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (BJVN), Wiesenthal opens a new office in Vienna in autumn 1961, where he resumes the work he has begun in Linz. He collects a vast number of documents on Nazi perpetrators and crimes, which today are accessible in the form of around 5,000 case files, among other things.

In addition to these case files, Wiesenthal leaves behind an extensive body of correspondence. Throughout his life, he is in contact with thousands of individuals, primarily survivors and their relatives, as well as other witnesses, prosecuting authorities and Jewish organisations worldwide. His aim is to reconstruct Nazi crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. This collection of preserved documents shows the difficulties he encounters in his quest for justice in a largely indifferent post-war Europe, as well as the relentless efforts and networks of survivors, NGOs, lawyers, prosecutors, historians and others to overcome these obstacles. The documents show how Wiesenthal, an increasingly well-known public figure worldwide, consistently involves many people, including potential witnesses and volunteers, in the daily work of the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre, which is dedicated to tracking down former Nazis and their collaborators. The documents also provide insight into the political struggles of various human rights organisations in the second half of the twentieth century, as Wiesenthal serves as an advisor or active member of several of them.

His commitment to preventing the past from being forgotten and to helping society come to terms with it shapes Wiesenthal’s life and work. Before his death, he expresses the wish for the collected materials to be integrated into the VWI, which is still in the conceptual stage at that time. The VWI’s archival holdings are systematically catalogued, entered into a database, digitised and thus made accessible to researchers and the interested public.