Learning from history — experience of totalitarian regimes of the 20th century

The Holocaust Resource Center is a collection of sources from the Yad Vashem Archives. It includes several types of documents about the Holocaust, the ideology and political system of National Socialism. The documents are provided in English including letters and diaries written by Jews during the Holocaust as well as photograpsh and original documents.

The website also presents a collection of testimonies of Holocaust survivors and excerpts of memoirs written after the war.

Thirteen main topics, called “Gates”, give introductions into each topic and links to various additional sources on the subject. The sources are listed by media types (Artifact Collection, Diaries and Letters, Photographs, Research and Testimonies).

There are such topics (“Gates”) as: Antisemitism and Racism; The Nazi Rise to Power; Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933 – 1939; Isolation and Ghettoization; Nazi Camps; The Final Solution; Jewish Resistance; The Individual and the Family; Jewish Life in Nazi Europe, 1939-1945; Righteous Among the Nations; The Local Population; The World and the Holocaust; Holocaust Survivors.

The database is very useful for planning a lesson with original sources. A Lexicon with short texts gives a concise elementary introduction into various topics. It is helpful for letting scholars search for informations and sources. Another useful tool is a detailed time line.

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