The Shoah Memorial has made 110,000 photos, 2,500 posters and 1,800 postcards available to the public. Eight thousand images of Jewish life in France during the Second World War are accessible online.
In 1994, the photo library was created with a collection of 8,000 images that had been in the paper archives until then. Most have to do with the Holocaust in Europe and the major trials. Since the 1950s, they have come from the C.D.J.C.’s work on major exhibitions, the Nuremberg trials and the Adolf Eichmann trial.
Few documents were available in France at the time. Jewish communities were gone, and posters and postcards with them.
Since 1994, the photo department has expanded the collection, focusing on France (internment, the Holocaust, resistance and rescue), Judaica postcards and historical and film posters.
The photo library is the depository of the photo archives of Jewish institutions, including the Œuvre de Secours à l’Enfance and the Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs Israélites de France, as well of public figures such as the great Rabbi Jacob Kaplan and Claude Kelman.
Every week, photographs and materials are donated to the Memorial, opening up new avenues of research and enriching a collection of images dedicated to the history and memory of the Holocaust in France and Europe.
The collection now has over 110,000 photographs — of which nearly 65,000 have been catalogued — almost 2,500 posters (including 1,000 movie posters), 1,800 Judaica postcards and 300 anti-Semitic postcards. Eight thousand images are accessible on the Memorial’s website, a figure that is steadily growing.
To request information or donate or order photographs, please e-mail the photo library, which will reply as soon as possible.
