The Wiener Library holds over 700 deposited document collections, most of the descriptions of which are accessible via our document catalogue:
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Another 600 collections are waiting to be processed. The collections vary in size from one letter to many boxes, and exist in original manuscript form, microfilm, bound volume and loose folder.


Subjects covered by the collections include:

• Concentration camps
• Refugees
• Internment
• Jewish secular and religious life in pre-Third Reich
• Persecution of Jews by Nazis including aryanisation
• Political and cultural life in pre-war Germany
• War crimes trials
• Post war restitution
• Artistic representation of the Holocaust.

The following collections are a sample of the material held:

• Philipp Manes collection (Doc 1346) consisting of numerous writings, correspondence and diaries of the German Jewish fur trader and resident of Berlin, who kept diaries during his incarceration in Theresienstadt, and who eventually perished in Auschwitz
• The papers of Vicky Abrams (Doc 1031), former member of Neu Beginnen, the Leninist organisation which operated in Berlin in the 1930s, including her original censored postcards from Lichtenburg concentration camp
• The 'Henriques' Collection (MF Doc 52) containing reports and papers on the activities of the Jewish Relief Units in post-war Germany. Rose Henriques was one of the JRU's fieldworkers. See also the Wiener Library Photo Archive.
• Original documentation from Jewish representative organisations in pre-war Germany (Doc 602-608).

In addition, the Wiener Library holds several hundred unpublished memoirs, which recount the experiences of refugees, survivors of the Holocaust and exiles from Nazi occupied Europe. Most of these are accessible via the main book catalogue. Some are an integral part of the document collections, eg those contained within the Reunion of the Kindertransport Collection (Doc 1368), which contains 166 accounts of the experiences of former Jewish child refugees who were rescued from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938-1939.

The Wiener Library is still actively collecting material, which will be preserved and made accessible to readers.