This guide was created for IU students by Mark Roseman, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in History, and edited by Scott Libson, Librarian for History and Religious Studies Studies.
There is a huge amount of information about the Holocaust on the internet. This guide lists many reputable websites and can help you avoid bogus ones. Please bring new sites to our attention. If they are legitimate and valuable, we will add them to the list.
Holocaust Website Guide
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Some major Holocaust gateways and collections
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Content organized around topics such as the Camp System, Ghettos, War Crime Trials, Churches, Liberation, Women, Non-Jewish Victims and Victims Assets, etc. It also has sections on the arts, educational resources, museums & remembrances, photos, film & TV. You can search for knowledge, documents, survivor testimony or photographs.
The Holocaust museum has now created a site, which you can join, which curates particular collections of primary sources.
Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Although this site is specifically designed for elementary to high school teachers, the resources are valuable for scholars and the site is organized well. It provides a detailed index and internal links leading to more in-depth descriptions of topics. It includes a detailed Timeline, a People section arranged according to victims, perpetrators, bystanders, resistors, rescuers, liberators, and survivors. The Teachers Resources Section identifies documents, maps, bibliographies, movies, videos, and photographs as well as a detailed list of more web sites. The glossary includes the pronunciation of foreign words, with the option to hear the words pronounced, both within the glossary and when words appear in the text.
Yad Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
The main part of the site to research the Holocaust is the Holocaust resource center. Also of interest: the Frequently Asked Questions section, a chronology, a selected bibliography, primary documents on the Holocaust (including photographs, diaries and letters, documents, testimonies, maps and charts, and artifacts), and links to related web sites. It also has a collection of documents online (most of course not in English), which you can search, and rotating virtual exhibitions.
Museum of Tolerance Online (Simon Wiesenthal Center)
The site provides extensive information about the Holocaust. It provides "3,000 text files and tens of thousands of photos" on individuals, places, photographs and topics with its own index (located in the section called Multimedia Learning Center). It also includes a glossary, a timeline, Frequently Asked Questions, Responses to Revisionist Arguments (see the section on Current Publications) and primary documents.
remember.org
The website, 'A people’s history of the Holocaust and genocide,' contains art, photos, poems, memories and factual information on the Holocausts of the Second World War. It presents a variety of information on varying aspects of the experiences of Jews, Slavs, Roma and others during World War II. There are lesson plans and resources for teachers working at secondary school level, including a teaching guide.
Nizkor project
The site provides a range of information on the Holocaust and on Holocaust denial and revisionism, which it aims to refute. It includes a section of Questions and Answers pertaining to Holocaust denial. The Nizkor Project is directed by Ken McVay. It includes a huge array of primary sources online including the Eichmann trial and many other sources
“The Jewish Holocaust 1933 1945”
A general site with documents.
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Other Website Guides
Institute of Historical Research guide
[NB do not confuse with the Institute of Historical Review. See Holocaust deniers, below.]Literature of the Holocaust
Links to numerous text files by University of Pennsylvania English Professor Al Filreis.
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Gateway to non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust
Holocaust Forgotten
Note: Most of the sites in other sections include documents and information about Roma, gays and other groups
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Maps
US Holocaust Memorial Museum Mapping and Geography Initiative
See also:
- The collection of historical maps at the University of Texas.
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Audiovisual materials
US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collections Search
Note that you can filter your search based on type of material, which includes photographs, film, etc. The materials include extensive metadata, including subjects, provenance, and copyright information. Some of the films must be viewed on-site, but many others are available online.
Ghetto fighters House (Lo Hamehagettaot)
Use the search function, and limit your search to photos. The word Warsaw, for example, generates 4823 hits from the photo archive.
See also:
- ThoughtCo. Holocaust Photograph Collection
- YIVO images of Jewish Life "People of a thousand towns." The online catalog of photographs of Jewish life in prewar Eastern Europe.
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Policy and perpetrators
German Propaganda Archive
Jewish Virtual Library: Kristallnacht
Web Genocide Documentation Centre
Biographies, trial materials and more
- House of the Wannsee Conference (lots of material on the Wannsee Conference)
- Primary source: Himmler’s speech at Posen. Note that you can hear a real audio recording of Himmler’s speech in German. It’s worth it, to hear the tone, even if you don’t speak German
- On the Einsatzgruppen
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Camps, ghettoes, killing sites
US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettoes, 1933-1945
See also:
- UK site exploring the History of the Concentration Camps
- The Auschwitz Album – an album documenting the arrival of Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz.
- Remember.org – Birkenau and the Austrian camp of Mauthausen)
- Deathcamps.org – An extensive set of pages about the Action Reinhard camps
- Bergen Belsen memorial site – The other German camps have similar sites
- Video of liberation of Bergen Belsen and records of Belsen trial
- Lodz Ghetto
- Theresienstadt – Martyrs Remembrance Association
- A Czech site (in English)
- Resistance
- Rescue
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Trials
Yale Avalon Project International Tribunal for Germany
Harvard Nuremberg Trials Project
Includes the documents used in some of the follow-up trials carried out by the United States in Nuremberg
Transcripts of the Eichmann trial
Belsen trial
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Testimony on the Web
Shoah Foundation Archive
Access restricted to IU affiliates
Fortunoff Collection at Yale
Only small excerpts are available online
Voices of the Holocaust
Includes some of the earliest testimonies recorded after the war – before tape recorders were in common use
See also:
- Testimonies at University of Michigan
- Fred R Crawford witness to the Holocaust files (transcripts – includes many liberators of the camps). This site includes text, photographs and videos from the Fred Roberts Crawford Witness to the Holocaust Project Files.
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Holocaust Deniers (not to be used as a source unless you are looking at deniers)
David Irving’s Website
A sophisticated site of Holocaust deniers blending genuine documents and real insights with falsifications and massive antisemitism.
VHO
Claims to be the world’s largest site of holocaust “revisionism”
Location: