J300: Holocaust Testimony

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On this page: Primary sources: Books - Primary sources: collections - Primary sources: newpapers, etc - Secondary sources - Useful web sites

 

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I. Browsing and searching for primary sources (primarily books)

Two areas in the Wells Library Research Collections are especially rich in materials about the Holocaust: D804 -D811 (5th floor) and DS 134-135 (6th floor). Here's what you'll find:

 

D804.196: personal narratives
D804.3: psychological aspects
D804.348: historiography, influence, social conditions, genocide, philosophical aspects
D805.5: Auschwitz survivors’ testimonies
D805.G3: POWs and concentration camps’ memoirs
D808-9: refugees and displaced persons
D810.J4: Holocaust, general sources

DS134.255: Kristalnacht
DS134.42: German Jews
DS134.72: Children in the Holocaust

 

You can also browse Holocaust narratives by country. Jewish communities are classified under DS135 with the following letter and number indicating a specific country. Personal narratives are classified under a country when the memoir specifies the narrator’s country of origin. For example, Anne Frank’s diary would be classified under the number for The Netherlands: DS135.N6.

Country by country:

 

Austria: DS135.A93	Balkan Peninsula: DS135.B33	Baltic States: DS135.B34	Belarus: DS135.R93
Belgium: DS135.B43	Britain: DS135.E55	Bukovina: DS135.R72	Bulgaria: DS135.B85
Czechoslovakia: DS135.C97	Denmark: DS135.D43	France: DS135.F9	Germany: DS135.G5
Greece: DS135.G73	Hungary: DS135.H93	Italy: DS135.I9	Netherlands: DS135.N6
Poland: DS135.P62, DS135.P63	Romania: DS135.R73	Russia: DS135.R95	Ukraine: DS135.U4

 

You can "virtually" browse in IUCAT, using the "Call Number Search," or use the Advanced Keyword Search  to combine keywords and Library of Congress Subject headings for more precise searching.

 

Here are some Library of Congress subject terms that may help:

 

holocaust jewish biography

Holocaust Jewish 1939-1945 personal narratives
Holocaust survivors Interviews.
World War, 1939-1945 Personal narratives, Jewish.
World War, 1939-1945 Children.
Holocaust survivors Biography.
Jewish children in the Holocaust Biography.
Jewish refugees Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 Personal narratives, Jewish Sources.

world war 1939-1945 atrocities

concentration camps europe

 

**TIP: use Google Books or Hathi Trust to find something right on topic, then look it up in IUCAT and use the subject headings or call number to find more on the same topic.

 

To find non-book materials in IUCAT, use the Sound Recording Search for audio resources (such as interviews) or the DVD/Video Seach for video resources. 

 

Take your search beyond the collections of the IU libraries by searching WorldCat, the combined online catalogs of hundreds of US and international libraries. Use the format limits to find non-book materials. Borrow materials from other libraries that you find in WorldCat by clicking on the Request Materials from ILL link.

 

**TIP: use OneSearch@IU to search IUCAT, WorldCat and several other databases at the same time. You'll find books, book reviews and journal articles in one search.

 

II. Other collections of primary source materials

The museums and libraries listed at the end of this page have huge collections of relevant primary source materials. Some of these are available electronically or on microfilm. **TIP: consult with the librarians in Government Documents (Wells Library East Tower 2) for more ideas about how to find materials published or collected by governments.

 

Conditions & politics in occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945  - a digitized collection of intelligence reports received by the British Foreign Office, includes an indepth report on the destruction of Jewish communities.

 

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports 1941-1996 - a collection of news reports from all over the world, compiled and translated into English by the US Government.

 

The Jewish people from Holocaust to nationhood: archives of the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief, 1933-1960  - (on microfilm, Wells Library East Tower 2, DS135.E5 A5) a massive collection of documents about the plight of Jewish refugees during and after the Holocaust. (collection described in more detail here).

 

Nuremberg Trials - selection of documents from the trials, but see Nuremberg war crimes trials, on CD in Government Documents (Wells Library East Tower 2),  for a more complete and authoritative set of documents.

 

Adolf Eichmann Trials - this is the complete transcript, but not the most usable format. The transcript is also available in print, The trial of Adolf Eichmann (Jerusalem, 1992- ), 9 volumes, Wells Library Research Collections, JX5441 .E3 I87 1992.

University of Michigan Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories - see "Interviews" section for a big collection of transcripts of interviews with Holocaust survivors

 

III. Primary sources in newspapers, magazines and journals

Contemporary (Holocaust-era) English-language magazines and newspapers may provide different perspectives, eye-witness accounts, or other useful information.

 

Readers Guide Retrospective 1890-1982 is an online index to 100+ widely-read American magazines. (**TIP: Some magazines have been digitized by Google: use the Advanced Book Search and select "Magazines" as Content. Limit by date of publication. )

 

Periodicals Index Online covers thousands of "highbrow" publications and academic journals from the 17th century to the 1990s. It includes materials in several languages other than English (full text of more than 400 journals is available through a companion database, Periodicals Archive Online).

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the [London] Times Digital Archive, are online archives of these core English-language newspapers. Searching tip: remember that the events we think of now as "front page" may not have attracted much attention initially. Also remember that events, persons and places may have had different names at the time.

Hundreds of other newspapers (including newspapers from Germany and other European countries) are available on microfilm: a good strategy is to use the major papers archived online to determine specific dates, then browse other newspapers on microfilm for those dates.

AP Photo Archive is a picture archive (the photo collection used by the Associated Press). Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003 might also be a good source for images.

 

You'll find other relevant sources on the Libraries' Old News page. 

 

IV. Tracking down the existing research on your topic

Your explorations in the library and in IUCAT will get you started with some of the scholarly monographs (books written by historians and other academics) on your topic. You'll also need to consult journals to get a good sense of what research is being done.

 

Historical Abstracts covers scholarly journals in history.

 

Academic Search is multi-disciplinary. It  includes both popular magazines and scholarly journals. You can limit your search to "peer reviewed" articles.

 

If your topic overlaps with other fields such as medicine, psychology, political science, etc, check the Libraries' Resources by Subject pages. Some resources that might be especially helpful are: PsycINFO (psychology), ATLA Religion Database (religious studies), and Sociological Abstracts (sociology).

JSTOR is an electronic archive of scholarly journals in many fields, with coverage back to the first issues of each journal. It’s an excellent resource for contemporary studies of your topic (what scholars/intellectuals were writing about events as they unfolded). Because it's all full text, you can find references to very specific terms (such as the names of individual survivors). (**TIP: use JSTOR to find primary source materials as well --limit your search by date of publication to retrieve materials published in the period you're writing about.)

 

  

V. Useful web sites

Many Holocaust-related web sites are labors of love by individuals --and unfortunately, some are works of hate. When uisng material taken from the web, be sure to ask yourself these basic questions: Who created this page? Why? Where do the materials on the page come from? If it's hard to answer any of these questions, check the information on the site in other sources before using it in your research. This is an approach you will take to any web research, but it's especially important when researching a topic as sensitive and emotionally charged as the Holocaust. (For more ideas about how to decide if a specific web site is a good resource or not, see Evaluating Web Sites and Using Primary Sources on the Web.)

Here are some good places to start:

 

IUB Libraries Jewish Studies page - see links under Jewish History, and "Useful links" from main page

 

Academic Guide to Jewish History: Holocaust & Antisemitism - from the University of Toronto, an indepth research guide. Some references are to print/electronic materials at the University of Toronto library, but check IUCAT and the IUB Libraries web site, because we have most of the materials listed.

 

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - has a huge collection of photographs, documents, taped testimonies, oral histories, etc. Some of this material is available online (including 14,000 photographs); tapes/transcripts can be ordered from the web page.

 

Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority (Jerusalem). See "Digital Collections" section

 

Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies - links to online resources, including material on other genocides

 

last updated January 30, 2012