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Fritz Goldschmidt was born in Breslau in 1893, the son of a doctor who founded the first Jewish student fraternity in 1886. Goldschmidt was a judge in the High Court in Berlin, however shortly after the Nazis came to power, new legislation precluded him from continuing in the profession and he devoted most of his time to working for the Central Verein Deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central League of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith) as the representative for Charlottenburg.

Goldschmidt was sent to Sachsenhausen between 1937 and 1938; a detailed description of this can be found within his personal account. At Sachsenhausen he befriended an evangelical preacher, an acquaintance of Martin Buber and Pastor Niemöller.

After Goldschmidt's release he came to Great Britain in May 1939. He later became joint secretary of the United Restitution Office in London in 1949 and died in 1968.

Nothing is known about the author of these diaries.

Walter Rauff was a professional naval officer until 1937 when he began working for the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (security service) in which service he became head of the technical affairs section of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security main office). In this capacity, during 1941 and 1942 he supervised the outfitting and despatch of some 20 gas vans in which at least 200,000 people were murdered. Rauff left Berlin to lead an SD Einsatzkommando in Tunis in late 1942. He became district SS und Polizeiführer (SS and police leader) for Northern Italy in September 1943. After the war, having escaped from a prisoner of war camp he eventually settled in Chile where he managed to evade extradition and died in 1984.

Fritz Gross was born in Vienna in 1897, the son of a Jewish dealer in precious stones, Herman Gross; fought in World War One, where he lost some of his closest friends, after which he moved to Germany where he worked at a variety of jobs in different places; joined the German Communist Party (KPD)in 1919 and was also an activist in various other left wing groups such as the 'Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe', of which he was the general secretary in 1923.

He married Babette Thüring, also an activist, in 1920 and they had a son in 1923; in 1929, after their separation he moved to Hamburg, and stayed in the house of Magda Hoppstock-Huth; after Adolf Hitler came to power he moved to England, eventually setting up home in Regent Square, London, where he built up a lending library for other refugees and the house became a meeting place. He spent much of his time working in the British Library where he produced most of his writing, without being able to publish much; died 1946.

In May 1960 Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and handed over to the police authorities in Israel. The police investigation was put into the hands of a special unit (Bureau 6) which took 9 months to complete its task. The resulting indictment comprised 15 counts of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership of a hostile organisation.

The trial commenced on 10 April 1961 and Eichmann pleaded not guilty on all counts. Supported by more than 100 witnesses and 1600 documents the prosecution presented its case. The defence made no attempt to challenge the facts of the Holocaust or the authenticity of the documents that were evidence of it. The defence played down Eichmann's involvement and stressed the need to obey orders. The court found Eichmann guilty on all counts and sentenced him to death on 15 December 1961. Eichmann's lawyers lodged an appeal against the verdict and on 29 May 1962 the Israel Supreme Court rejected the appeal. Eichmann was executed on 31 May 1962.

Myer Jack Landa was born in Leeds in 1874. He was a British Jewish writer and long time sketch writer in the Press Gallery at the House of Commons. He married Gertrude Gordon, sister of Samuel Gordon, the writer. The two of them published a number of novels and plays together; she often under the pseudonym of Aunt Naomi. His principal interests seem to have been the portrayal of the Jew and Jewish life in theatre and the importance of Palestine as the centre of Jewish life.

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George Brody and Irma, née Pauncz, and their children were a well-to-do, assimilated Jewish Hungarian family who were living in Budapest when the Nazis began to transport the Hungarian Jewish population to death camps in 1944. They survived the war and stayed on in Hungary until shortly after the Russian invasion in 1956 when George and Irma successfully attained refugee status in Switzerland and Judit came to England. Livia, the other daughter died in 1947.

The Cohn and Baer families were Berlin Jews during the Third Reich.

Ella Mayer was born in a village in the Rhine Palatinate in 1908, the daughter of a kosher butcher in a small Jewish community. In 1932 both Ella and her sister were brought to England to stay with an English uncle, who had lived in London since before the First World War. Having already met Ben Courts, on the threat of enforced return to Germany, due to the immanent expiry of her visa, they married and she made London her permanent home.

Walter Raschkow, was a German Jewish architect. His wife Emma was non-Jewish. Their daughter, Ingeborg-Maria Raschkow (later Mayer) went to England throughout World War Two whilst her parents remained in Stuttgart.

Jacobs was a Major in the Civil Defence Forces during World War Two.

This collection of documents and images came about as the consequence of an appeal made in the May 1962 issue of the AJR Information, by the Council for Jews from Germany, for memorabilia and documents of Germany Jewry, of historical and artistic value, for the Memorial Hall to German Jewry at the Wiener Library.

Walter Rosenberger was a judge in the Berlin civil court, 1 Oct 1929-1 Apr 1933, when, along with other 'non-aryan' judges he was relieved of his duties. He died in May 1980.

Otto Löwenstein was Jewish but his wife was not. He died in prison, 1938, though it is not known why he was sent there.

The papers in this collection relate to the trial of six Danish Nazis for anti-semitic libel, in Copenhagen, 1937. The defendants include Ernst Lemvigh Müller, Niels Olsen, editor of the National-Socialistiks Maanedhaefte, Aag Henning Andersen, Nannestad Møoller, Valdemar Jensen, editor of Stormen and Betty Henning. The longest sentence was 80 days.

Heinz Werner Löwenstein emigrated to South Africa in 1935. He became a sergeant in the South African Army [1941]; saw action in North Africa, 1942; Italian prisoner of war, Oct 1942; repatriated, Apr 1943.

The Kitchener camp, a derelict site which had previously been an army camp, was taken over by the Council for German Jewry at the beginning of 1939 as a result of pressure from the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland to rescue threatened Jews from Germany and Austria. Conditions for admission were that inmates must be aged between 18 and 40 and that they have a definite prospect of emigration overseas. The camp began receiving refugees in February 1939 and ended with the outbreak of war in September after which most of the inmates chose to enlist in the British army. Three young English Jews, Jonas and Phineas May and M Banks, who were later to become commissioned officers in the Pioneer Corps, were put in charge of the management of the camp.

Charlotte Lewin was born in Breslau in 1892. She went to school there and passed an examination to become a teacher of English and French in 1912. Soon afterwards she spent 18 months in England in order to improve her English. On her return to Breslau she worked as a secretary at the American Consulate until 1917 when diplomatic relations with the USA were broken. After a short period working as a librarian at the Breslau municipal library she went on to work in the archives and library at Breslau University Department of Economics.

She took over the running of her father's textile business along with an associate in 1923, her father having died in 1921. During this time she continued to teach and study the English language.

In October 1936 she was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for making defamatory comments about Goebbels after the latter had come to Breslau to give a lecture. After her release 7 months later she began to make plans to leave Germany. She arrived in England in March 1938. In London and later Darlington she worked for HM Forces Education Department as a German language teacher.

Kurt Josef Waldheim was born 1918; served in the Wehrmacht, 1941-1945; squad leader, Eastern Front, 1941; interpreter and liaison officer with the Italian 5th division (Pusteria), Apr-May 1942; O2 officer (communications) with the Kampfgruppe West Bosnia, Jun-Aug 1942; interpreter with the liaison staff attached to the 9th Italian Army in Tirana, early summer 1942; O1 officer in the German liaison staff with the 11th Italian Army and in the staff of the Army Group South Greece in Jul-Oct 1943; O3 officer on the staff of Army Group E in Arksali, Mitrovica and Sarajevo, Oct 1943-Feb 1945; Austrian diplomatic service, 1945-1972; Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1972-1981; President of Austria, 1986-1992; died 2007.

In early 1986 when Waldheim's candidacy for the office of Federal President of Austria was made known his service as a Wehrmacht intelligence officer during World War Two caused an international controversy. A Thames Television documentary was made on Kurt Waldheim's role during the War. The programme takes the form of a commission of enquiry presided over by 5 distinguished European judges in which evidence of Waldheim's wartime duties and activities is subjected to scrutiny by lawyers. The object of the exercise is to ascertain whether or not Waldheim should be answerable to charges of certain war crimes. Testimony is taken from a number of historians and lawyers and eyewitnesses. The unanimous conclusion of the commission is that Waldheim should not have to answer charges for war crimes.

In 1929 Dr Paul Plaut, a psychiatrist and child delinquency expert in Berlin, published a book, Die Psychologie der produktiven Persönlichkeit. In preparation he sent questionnaires to about 400 prominent scientists and artists in Germany and Austria asking for their views and experiences.

Michael Zylberberg was born in Plotsk, Poland, 1906, into a rabbinical family. He qualified to teach Hebraic history and literature in Warsaw and proceeded to work in a number of schools there, 1933-1939. After the outbreak of World War Two he was active in the Warsaw ghetto organising illegal schools for thousands of homeless children. After the Warsaw ghetto rising in 1943 he managed to escape to the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he lived for 2 years passing off as a Christian.

Years after the end of the war he was contacted by someone who had discovered his manuscript diary and notes. He published his diary under the title A Warsaw Diary in 1969. He also contributed many articles and book reviews on the subject of the Holocaust to the Jewish Chronicle.

He became secretary of the British section of the Yivo Institute, and was a member of the Association of Jewish Journalists and of the World Jewish Congress. He died in 1971.

The provenance of the document is unknown. Whilst the document states that it was produced for the Landgericht, Münster, 1960, the case to which it pertains is not known.

Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklarung nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen (Central Office of the Provincial Justice Authorities to Resolve National Socialist Violent Crime) in Ludwigsburg, Germany, was initially set up to investigate only those Nazi crimes committed outside the territory of the Federal Republic; in later years it assumed responsibility for investigating all Nazi crimes.

Eliezer Kaplan was born 1891; joined the Socialist Zionist Party, 1905; founder of the Youth of Zion - Renewal movement, 1908; founder of the Youth of Zion movement in Russia, 1912; member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, 1919; immigrated to Mandate Palestine, and was involved in merging Youth of Zion with Hapoel Hatzair to form Hitachdut, 1920; elected to the Zionist Executive Committee, 1920; went to Berlin to run Hitachdut's world office, 1920; returned to Mandate Palestine and joined the Histadrut's Office of Public Works, 1923; Director of the Technical Department of the Tel Aviv municipality, 1923-1925; Tel Aviv city council, 1925-1933; treasurer of the Jewish Agency, 1933-1948; signed the Israeli declaration of independence, and appointed Minister of Finance in the provisional government, 1948; elected to the first Knesset as a member of Mapai, and retained the Finance Ministry post, also becoming Minister of Trade and Industry; Deputy Prime Minister, 1952; died 1952.

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The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) grew from organisations founded in 1881 to assist Jewish migrants arriving at Ellis Island, USA. During World War Two HIAS provided immigration and refugee services. After the war, HIAS was instrumental in evacuating the displaced persons camps and aiding in the resettlement of some 150,000 people in 330 U.S. communities, as well as Canada, Australia and South America. More recently, since the mid-70s, HIAS has helped more than 300,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union and its successor states escape persecution and rebuild new lives in the United States. As the migration arm of the organised American Jewish community, HIAS also advocates on behalf of refugees and migrants on the international, national and community level.

Hans Heinrich Lammers (1879-1962), was a career civil servant, who joined the Nazi party in 1932 and was appointed by Hitler to chief of the Chancery on 30 January 1933, and promoted to Reichsminister on 26 November 1937. After 1941, the power and influence that Lammers was used to wielding passed increasingly to Martin Bormann.

Thomas Cook (Thomas Cook and Son Ltd) ran a freight forwarding and storage business in Lisbon. During World War Two Portugal was neutral and Jews and others escaped there (often through Spain) en route to the USA and other places of refuge. Jews in Europe, intending to leave would have sent their belongings to Thomas Cook, Lisbon, as it was an internationally trusted firm, with offices around the world. In 1940 it was owned by Companie de Wagons-Lits, based in Brussels, but was later sequestrated by the British Government.

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These three unrelated documents are evidence of anti-Semitic measures taken by the Nazis.

Louis Löwenthal, was a Jewish travelling salesman, in Berlin and other locations in Germany.

Josef Reheis, a German citizen, was prosecuted for uttering 'unpatriotic' sentiments about the war. Having admitted to two strangers that he regularly listened to foreign radio stations for reliable news about the progress of the war and that he felt Germany was sure to lose, he was denounced by them, and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

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Reports by Hungarian Foreign Office officials of meetings and discussions with British foreign office officials and secret service agents shed some light on the background to relations between the two countries immediately before and during World War Two.

Alliance Israélite Universelle was a Jewish organisation founded in France in 1865 as a reaction to antisemitism, and the main aim of which was the defence of world Jewry. The Ligue Internationale contre le Racisme et l'Antisémitisme was created in 1928. The latter was not an exclusively Jewish organisation but its defence of East European Jews attracted many Jews and the tendency of many of its members to seek confrontation with antisemites on the streets brought it into alliance with left-wing organisations.

Nothing is known of the provenance or authorship of this report, which is a digest of details about an international anti-Jewish congress which took place in Belgium.

This miscellaneous collection of reports document the situation of German Jewish refugees in Portugal in the 1930s. Reference is made to the Committee for the Aid of Jewish Refugees and to its founder Augusto d'Esaguy.

Delegacíon de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, originally called the Comite contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo de la Argentina, was an umbrella organisation was founded in July 1935 for all important Jewish bodies in Argentina apart from the communists.

Hilfsverein Deutschsprechender Juden was founded by seven members of the German Jewish immigrant community of Buenos Aires who had been ostracized by Buenos Aires' non-Jewish 'German Colony'. The organisation assisted German Jewish immigrants who could no longer rely on the support of the German non-Jewish institutions many of which had succumbed to Nazi antisemitic propaganda.

Comite contra el Racismo y el Antisemitismo de la Argentina was founded by Argentine Jews in December 1934, comprising delegates from the major Jewish organisations and supported by the Jewish Colonization Association.

Nothing is known of the provenance and little is known of the authorship of these letters and reports which document the situation of Jews in Brazil in the 1930s.

Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie was a German conglomerate of companies formed in 1925 - many produced dyes, but soon later turning to advanced chemistry. IG Farben was founded as a reaction to Germany's defeat in World War One and held a monopoly on chemical production. During the National Socialist regime, it manufactured Zyklon B, a poison used for delousing, and later used as the lethal agent in the gas chambers of the death camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek. The company was a major user of slave labour and as a result 13 directors of IG Farben were sentenced to prison terms between one and eight years before a US military tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials, following the IG Farben Trial (1947-1948). As a result, in 1951, the company was split up into the original constituent companies.

In 1943 the occupation authorities in Salonika, Greece set up the Office for the Distribution of Jewish Property.

The Brand family were a Jewish family from Vienna. Max Brand came to Great Britain in 1939. Nothing is known of the fate of family members.

Siegfried Weiner was a Jewish lawyer who lived in Regensburg, Bavaria until October 1933, when the family emigrated to Palestine. The family later returned to Regensburg.

The Jewish Central Information Office, now known as the Wiener Library, was established in 1933. Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who worked in the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, fled Germany in 1933 for Amsterdam and together with Professor David Cohen, set up the Jewish Central Information Office, collecting and disseminating information about events happening in Nazi Germany. The collection was transferred to Manchester Square, London in 1939 with Wiener making the resources available to British government intelligence departments. The Library soon became known as 'Dr Wiener's Library' and the name was adopted.

After the war the Library's academic reputation increased and the collecting policies were broadened. Funds were raised, a new board was formed and the Library was re-launched. Work continued in providing material to the United Nations War Crimes Commission and bringing war criminals to justice. During the 1950s and 1960s the library began gathering eyewitness accounts, a resource that was to become a unique and important part of the Library's collection. In 1956 the Library was forced to move from Manchester Square and temporary accommodation had to be found, with some material being put into storage. A new premises was found in Devonshire Street. The Weiner library is the world's oldest Holocaust memorial institution.

Little is known about the author save for that which is contained in the letter itself, namely that Emmerich Menzner was a rank and file member of an SS cavalry regiment in an unidentified part of Poland in 1942, and that he hailed from Litzmannstadt (Lodz).

The Deutscher Fichte-Bund was a German, nationalist, antisemitic organisation, founded in Hamburg in 1914, the objective of which seemed to be the dissemination of propaganda both in Germany and abroad.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish community.

The Aliens Committee was formed by the Board in 1905 (the year the first Aliens Restrictions Act was passed) to ensure that Jewish immigrants received considerate treatment and to provide help with naturalisation problems.

Born 1888; Lt in the 10th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment; fought in the First World War; advocate of pacifism during the 1930s, attempted to mediate a truce in the Second World War by visiting the German legation in Dublin, leading to his name being placed on a list of persons to be arrested in the event of a German invasion. Patron of the British Peoples Party, an anti-war party that was accused of fascist sympathies; died 1953.

Rosa and Hedwig Seelig owned and ran a hotel for a relatively affluent clientele in Bad Kissingen, Bavaria. After the hotel was plundered during Kristallnacht, the two sisters went to live at a Jewish home for the aged in Frankfurt. They perished in Auschwitz during World War Two.