Agudath Israel of America is pleased to announce the opening of its Holocaust collection on the Agudah Archive website (https://agudaharchive.org/holocaust/351).

The thousands of documents in this collection paint a picture of the Holocaust’s impact on the history of European Orthodox Jewry and World Jewry’s valiant rescue efforts during and immediately following the horrors of the Holocaust. This aspect of Holocaust history has been neglected in most public archives and collections.

Until now, these documents have only been available in physical form, in the Orthodox Jewish Archives at Agudah headquarters. With assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, these documents are being digitized, organized and uploaded, in many themed collections.

The first three collections are now up on the website. The first, Holocaust interviews, contains over 70 audio interviews with Holocaust survivors. The second and third collections feature two periodicals, Jewish Opinion and Orthodox Tribune (originally Orthodox Youth or Agudah Youth), which were published by Zeirei Agudath Israel of America in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. These publications, over 50 issues with hundreds of pages of news and articles, give a window into the progression of the war and its aftermath. For example, the Adar 1942 issue includes a front page with the headline “On Nazi Atrocities,” news about rescue and about Agudah’s efforts to help with religious education for children that were sent to the land of Israel, and an op-ed by Jacob (Moreinu Yaakov) Rosenheim, ”The Right Answer to Hitler’s Challenge.”

These collections are the first of many that will be available to readers and scholars in the Holocaust section of the Agudah archives.

Agudath Israel’s executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel welcomed the on-line publication of the three collections as “an important milestone in the area of Holocaust education.”

“Our Gedolei Yisroel have encouraged us to know for ourselves what transpired during the Holocaust, and to teach it to our children, so that we will never forget this dark era, and so that we will forever be inspired by the spiritual heroism displayed by so many holy Jews . With the on-line publication of these three archival collections – and b’ezras Hashem many more collections to come — Agudath Israel is making a treasure trove of primary source materials accessible to the broad Jewish public. This is a truly historic achievement.”

Rabbi Zwiebel expressed Agudath Israel’s gratitude to the many people who were involved in this project, including Rabbi Moshe Kolodny, Agudah’s Archivist Emeritus, responsible for the founding and growth of the Orthodox Jewish Archives; Rabbi Yossi Aszkenazy, who has been funding and digitizing thousands of hours of historic Agudah recordings; the Levy and Cohen families, sponsors of the online archive; the Claims Conference and the German government, who are funding the Holocaust digitization project; Rabbi Labish Becker, Executive Director of Agudath Israel and Administrator of the Holocaust digitization project; and Ms. Judith Dinowitz, Project Lead.