The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is an international research infrastructure that supports and promotes Holocaust research, commemoration and education on a transnational level. EHRI-AT is the national node representing the Republic of Austria within this international research consortium.
The research infrastructure EHRI was included in the ESFRI Roadmap of the European Commission in 2018. EHRI has its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and is coordinated by the NIOD - Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Austria has been a founding member of EHRI since 2023. With the official establishment of the Austrian consortium in February 2024, EHRI-AT is now an active partner of the European research infrastructure EHRI.
EHRI-AT will seek to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Holocaust research infrastructure within Austria and beyond by:
• representing institutions in Austria working in the field of documentation, commemoration and research on the Holocaust to establish and develop a strong research consortium; • exchanging and sharing expertise on digital developments and connecting resources through a state-of-the-art digital infrastructure; • disseminating, implementing and developing innovative digital research tools; • offering fellowships and training opportunities for researchers, archivists and heritage professionals.
EHRI’s impact is primarily scientific; however, the infrastructure also pursues a broader social and political agenda. The recent rise of antisemitism, xenophobia and aggressive nationalisms in Europe and beyond demonstrate that Holocaust research is never a purely academic concern but a prerequisite for open and non-discriminatory societies across Europe and the world.
The EHRI portal is one of the central projects in EHRI. It is intended to provide researchers with a cross-national overview of archive material on the Holocaust. Since 2010, EHRI has identified over 2,233 archives from 63 countries and integrated information on over 37,000 collections. The need for such an infrastructure in Austria was already recognised by Simon Wiesenthal in the 1960s. He worked in Vienna with the Documentation Center of the Association of Jewish Persecutees of the Nazi Regime on a “List of Archives with Material on the Nazi Era”. The brochure was intended to support the work of courts and researchers. Lists of archives in Czechoslovakia, Israel and West Germany were compiled for this purpose. As can be seen from the following quote, there were striking similarities between Wiesenthal’s project and the digital EHRI portal.
“21. LIST OF ARCHIVES WITH DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE NAZI PERIOD.
A second list, namely that of archives organised by country with details about their holdings, is being prepared. It will be sent to the interested parties in the respective countries. So far we have finalised the lists of archives in Czechoslovakia, Israel and West Germany. When the work will be finished, the Documentation Centre will publish a special brochure. It will be of use to courts, historians and researchers, as we endeavour to indicate the type of documents contained in the archives when providing their addresses.”
Documentation Center of the Association of Jewish Persecutees of the Nazi Regime, Bulletin No. 9, January 31, 1969, p. 6, Bulletin (German)-1969/1
Prof. Éva Kovács
Prof. Dr., sociologist. Kovács studied sociology and economics at the Corvinus University in Budapest, PhD 1994, Habilitation 2009. Éva Kovács is also a Research Professor at the Centre for Social Sciences/Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence in Budapest. Her research fields are the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, research on memory and remembrance, and Jewish identity in Hungary and Slovakia. She has authored five monographs, edited ten volumes, published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, co-curated exhibitions in Budapest, Berlin, Bratislava, Krems, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. She is the founder of the audio-visual archive “Voices of the Twentieth Century” in Budapest. She was a member of the VWI International Academic Advisory Board from 2010 to 2012 and Academic Programme Director at the VWI between 2012 and 2020.
Mag.a phil., literary scholar with a focus on literary representations of the Holocaust, autobiographical sources, Yiddish literature, and theories of memory. Marianne Windsperger received her MA in Comparative Literature and Romance Studies from the University of Vienna and is a graduate of the Uriel Weinreich Program for Eastern European Jewish History and Culture at the YIVO Institute in New York. She has been working as a research coordinator at the VWI since 2018. Here, she coordinates the establishment of the Austrian consortium within the framework of EHRI-AT. In addition, she is an editorial team member of the open-access journal S:I.M.O.N. and a collaborator for the fellowship program as well as for scientific publications.
