(UK) Wiener Library to Open Previously Unseen Evidence in UK of Nazi Death Camps

[Jan Meisels Allen janmallen@att.net]

X-No-archive: yes
The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, UK
is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust. It
was formed in 1933 by Dr. Alfred Wiener as an information source for Jewish
communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of Jews under
the Nazis. He shipped his collection to London on the eve of World War ll
and worked with the British government to inform them about Hitler's regime
and provide evidence for the Nuremberg trials.

This week the Wiener Library will make public for the first time (at least
in the UK) war crimes files regarding early evidence of Holocaust death
camps. The information was smuggled out of Eastern Europe. Previously, the
archives of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) were closed
which is now being opened in the Wiener Library. The files establish that
the first demands for justice came from invaded countries such as Poland and
China.

According to an article in The Guardian, the archives and the UNWCC were
closed in the late 1940s as West Germany was being transformed to an ally at
the start of the cold war. The archives record gathering of evidence from
early 1942 that demonstrate rape and forced prostitution was being
prosecuted as war crimes-before the Bosnia conflict decades later. The
Polish government in exile filed records with detailed descriptions to the
UNWCC of the concentration camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz. Some of
the files indict Hitler directly for his role in coordinating and
controlling the massacres in Czechoslovakia-which was collected by the Czech
government in exile.

The UN War Crimes Commission catalogue will be available for searching
online this week. To be able to look at the archives itself, one must visit
the Library. The website for the Library is:
https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/
At this time I do not know where on the website this new war crimes
catalogue will be located.

To read The Guardian article see: http://tinyurl.com/mdvlfds
Original url:

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/18/opening-un-holocaust-files-archive-war-crimes-commission

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
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