DEADLINE EXTENDED till 12 June 2013

The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Seminar for Advanced Undergraduate, Master’s-level and First-year PhD Students:

Introduction to Holocaust Studies through the Records of the International Tracing Service Collection at the Wiener Library

21-25 October 2013

The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (CAHS),is pleased to invite applications for the seminar Introduction to Holocaust Studies through the International Tracing Service (ITS) Collection at the Wiener Library, designed for advanced undergraduate, master’s-level and first-year PhD students. The seminar is scheduled for 21-25 October 2013 at The Wiener Library in London, UK.

The objective of this seminar is to acquaint promising advanced undergraduate, master’s-level and first-year PhD students with the study of the Holocaust through this unique, vast collection. Nominations are welcome for students in all relevant academic disciplines, including history, politics, literature, Jewish studies, psychology, sociology, geography and others. Students may be UK citizens or attending universities in the UK, or attending universities in Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

About the ITS Archive

The ITS collection contains over 100 million pages of Holocaust-era documents relating to the fates of over 17.5 million people who were subject to incarceration, forced labour and displacement during and after World War II. The collection was opened in November 2007 as a result of an international campaign led by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. All eleven member states of the International Commission that have governed the archive are entitled to receive their own digital copies. In December 2011, the UK Foreign Office made the decision to deposit the UK’s digital copy at The Wiener Library.

The ITS collection is organized to focus powerfully on the perspective of the victims and survivors of persecution during the Holocaust, both Jews and non-Jews (including Roma). These documents have the potential for global reach. In the concentration camp-related records alone, one can find information about prisoners from across Europe, west to east, and from other continents.

The collection is divided into six major subunits: (1) pre-war and wartime prisoner arrest, incarceration and transport records from German concentration camp and police authorities; (2) pre-war, wartime and post-war records concerning foreign and forced labour in the German war economy, generated by the Nazi state, individual German firms and post-war Allied occupation authorities; (3) post-war Allied records of individuals and families seeking displaced persons status and emigration; (4) records relating to the Lebensborn (Fount of Life) program, medical experiments and "euthanasia"; (5) war crimes trials material and Allied investigations of the "death marches"; and (6) records of ITS predecessor organizations, child tracing branches and searches for missing individuals and children, including the so-called Tracing and Documentation ("T/D") files.

In advance of the workshop, participants will be assigned readings on various topics that will be presented as case studies and will be expected to arrive prepared to discuss the readings as they relate to the case studies. Participants will also be given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the Library’s collections and to explore the ITS archive during the seminar.

To Apply

The Wiener Library and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies invites applications from advanced undergraduate, master’s-level and first-year PhD students from all relevant academic disciplines who are UK citizens or attending universities in the UK, or attending universities in Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

Applications must be submitted in English and include:

(1) a Letter of Nomination from a faculty member in the nominee’s department that addresses the nominee’s potential as a scholar and specific interest, background, training and qualifications (including previous coursework, projects or publications). Faculty nominators must submit signed letters of nomination on their institutions’ letterhead under separate cover;

(2) a Letter of Intent from the Nominee discussing his/her interest in the field of the Holocaust and World War II, and how the ITS collection might further his/her studies in this area; and

(3) a current curriculum vitae that includes a description of the candidate’s foreign language skills according to the Common European Reference Framework for Languages.

Please submit all application materials via mail, fax or e-mail attachment to:

Dr Christine Schmidt
International Tracing Service Archive Researcher
The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide
29 Russell Square
London WC1B 5DP
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7436 6428
E-mail: cschmidt@wienerlibrary.co.uk

All application materials must be received by 31 May 2013. We will notify selected participants by the end of June.

Awards
Awards of up to £500 per participant will help defray the cost of travel to and from each participant’s home institution and London, shared accommodation for the seminar’s duration and meals. Participants are required to attend the full duration of the seminar.

Contact

If you have questions, please contact Christine Schmidt at the address above or call +44 (0) 20 7636 7247. For more information, visit http://wienerlibrary.co.uk/International-Tracing-Service.