The consortium EHRI-AT
The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is an international 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 national consortium is coordinated by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).
EHRI-AT will seek to ensure the long-term sustainability of Holocaust research 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.
The partner institutions in EHRI-AT are:
- Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz (CJS)
- Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW)
- OeAD (Programm ERINNERN:AT)
- Institute for Jewish History in Austria (Injoest)
- Place for Learning and Remembrance Schloss Hartheim (LGSH)
- University of Innsbruck (LFU)
- National Funds of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism (Nationalfonds)
- Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI)
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.
Within the framework of EHRI-AT, the following conferences took place:
10th/11th December 2023: Holocaust Literature and Ego-Documents, Second EHRI-AT Conference of the Centre for Jewish Studies in cooperation with the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).
23rd/24th April 2022: Connected Histories. Memories and Narratives of the Holocaust in Digital Space, First EHRI-AT Conference hosted by the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).