Wiener Library
The UK’s principal archive and exhibition centre devoted to the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and later genocides. Founded by Dr Alfred Wiener from the 1930s as a documentation effort against antisemitism, it now presents tightly curated displays drawn from its vast holdings of eyewitness accounts, photographs, pamphlets, press cuttings and legal/administrative records.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Documenting the Warning Signs (1933–39)
Pre-war leaflets, reports and photographs show how surveillance of anti-Jewish policy and violence was gathered and circulated in real time.Read an early report beside a contemporary newspaper—see how ‘ordinary’ items foreshadow catastrophe.
📍 Introductory cases
Personal Papers & Testimony
Letters, diaries and family files trace persecution, flight and survival with granular detail that broad histories can’t capture.Follow one individual across multiple documents: name changes, visas, camp records and post-war tracing requests.
📍 Core archive selections
Propaganda & Counter-Propaganda
Contrasts Nazi publications with contemporary responses, exposing techniques of demonisation and the challenges of refutation.Compare typography, imagery and ‘pseudo-facts’—disinformation design has a look and rhythm.
📍 Thematic panels
Genocide After 1945
Links the Library’s methods—collect, verify, preserve—to documentation of later mass atrocities.Note continuities in language and bureaucracy across different places and decades.
📍 Rotating section
Inspire your Friends
- Originating in the 1930s under Dr Alfred Wiener, it is among the world’s oldest institutions formed expressly to document antisemitism and Nazi persecution while they were unfolding.
- The Library is a UK partner for digital access to the Arolsen Archives (formerly International Tracing Service), enabling research into victims and survivors using wartime and post-war records.
- Its press-cuttings and pamphlet collections preserve fragile, time-sensitive sources that rarely survive elsewhere—key for reconstructing public knowledge and response.
