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Collections and Archives Overview

The Collections Division

The Collections Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Musuem consists of eight branches: Archives, Art and Artifacts, Film and Video, Music, Oral History, Photo Archives, Collections Management, and Conservation. Together these branches are responsible for the acquisition, registration, preservation, storage, cataloging, reference, and reproduction of the thousands of collections housed in the Museum and displayed in its exhibitions, publications, and on its Web site.

The Collections Division identifies, collects, and preserves the documentary, photographic, and artifactual record of the Holocaust and makes it available for research and display. It seeks to enhance the accessibility of this material through user-friendly databases, online catalogs, web presentations, and extensive reference service.

International Archival Programs Division

The archival evidence of the Holocaust, consisting of millions of pages of documents, is scattered to virtually every country and clearly shows the enormity of the crime and its implications. This massive documentary record is endangered, however, and the dispersal of materials hinders expedient and productive use by researchers and survivors alike. The International Archival Programs Division of the Museum works to collect, preserve, and make available evidence of the Holocaust to scholars, survivors, and the general public.

The discovery of over 500,000 pages of Holocaust-era Jewish community records in Vienna a few years ago illustrates why it is so important to reproduce and preserve Holocaust documentation.

The Museum Collection

The Museum has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Holocaust-related materials in the world. Included in its holdings are works of art, artifacts, photographs, archival documents, manuscripts, historical footage, music and sound recordings, and oral testimonies.

Scope

The Collections of the Museum cover a broad range of subject areas pertaining to the history of the Holocaust. These include:

• Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
• The rise to power of the Nazi movement in Germany and Austria
• The flight of European refugees from Nazi Germany and refugee communities around the world
• Nazi racial science and the propaganda campaign against Jews, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), and the mentally and physically handicapped
• Nazi anti-Jewish policy in the 1930s, from the boycott through Kristallnacht
• Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war
• The invasion and occupation of eastern and western Europe
• The roundup, deportation, and resettlement of European Jewry
• The mass shootings conducted by mobile killing squads
• Ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centers
• Nazi collaborators and satellite states
• Resistance, rescue, and life in hiding during the Holocaust
• The liberation of Europe and the disclosure of Nazi concentration camps
• The war crimes trials
• The displaced persons camps
• Legal and illegal immigration to Palestine
• Postwar immigration to the Americas
• Holocaust assets and restitution
• Holocaust memorials and commemoration

Types of Materials

The Museum’s holdings include:

• Art: period drawings, prints, sculpture, posters, and other creative works
• Books and pamphlets
• Broadsides, advertisements, and maps
• Film and video historical footage, audio and video oral testimonies; music and sound recordings
• Furnishings, architectural fragments, models, machinery, and tools
• Microfilm and microfiche of government documents and other official records
• Personal effects, ritual objects, jewelry, musical instruments, and numismatics (currency)
• Personal papers: documents, correspondence, memoirs, and scrapbooks
• Photographs and photo albums
• Textiles: uniforms, costumes, clothing, badges, armbands, flags, and banners

Donations

The Collections Division seeks to augment its collection of artifacts, personal papers, oral history, music and sound recordings, films, and original photographs related to the Holocaust. If you have such materials and are willing to donate them to the Museum, please contact curator@ushmm.org or call 202-488-2649.