Immediately after being liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945, Simon Wiesenthal made it his mission to bring the perpetrators of the Holocaust to justice. In doing so, he sought to preserve the memory of this crime of the century. Over the following sixty years, he amassed a unique collection of archival, visual and audio documents, as well as correspondence, which remains an important part of Austria’s cultural heritage to this day.

At the core of Wiesenthal’s documentation activities are 4,483 case files on Nazi perpetrators, crime scenes and complexes of Nazi crimes. These were compiled by Wiesenthal and the staff of the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jews Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (BJVN) up to 2005. Within this body of material, the individual case files attract the greatest attention by far. The principal perpetrators of the Holocaust listed therein, such as Adolf Eichmann and Franz Murer, have garnered and continue to garner interest not only from historians and journalists but also from the broader public, both in Austria and beyond. They have been the subject of numerous novels, art projects, films and exhibitions. At the same time, the personal case files also include the names of many previously little-known perpetrators of the Holocaust, such as Karl Josef Fischer; well-known victims (e.g., Anne Frank); lesser-known victims; and Austrian politicians (such as Kurt Schuschnigg or Bruno Kreisky) as well as other public figures after 1945. These files contain additional information that makes them valuable for cultural, academic and media-related purposes. The correspondence and notes they include provide important insights into the networks and methods Wiesenthal used in his search for Holocaust perpetrators.

The digitisation of the sub-collection of personal case files is the second step in the gradual digitisation of the entire body of Nazi case files. The third step will be to digitise the thematic and location-based case files.

The digital copies are catalogued using the ActaPro archival information system and can be searched by keyword. Metadata can be accessed via the Archive’s website or on-site, where the holdings themselves can also be consulted. Digital copies can also be provided to users outside Vienna, worldwide, upon specific request and in compliance with copyright regulations. The metadata is also made available to Holocaust researchers worldwide via the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) portal. It will also be searchable via Europeana and Kulturpool.