Image Credit: Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of the Eger family archive

By KLTV Newsdesk –

Ground-breaking online platform offers unprecedented access to Holocaust histories from the North of England

Holocaust Centre North has announced the launch of its new online Collections Browser today (27 November), allowing remote access to parts of its Holocaust archive for the first time.

The development marks a major milestone in improving public access to Holocaust collections in the UK, making material previously available only on-site accessible to audiences worldwide.

Opening Up the Archive

The new platform sits alongside three curated digital galleries, each designed to guide visitors through themed selections of digitised photographs, documents, and personal artefacts.

The galleries aim to provide accessible entry points into the archive for people wishing to discover new stories of displacement, resilience, and rebuilding in the North of England.

Among the newly available collections are materials from the Bradford Jewish Refugee Hostel, a selection of treasured personal belongings brought to Britain by survivors, and a dedicated gallery exploring the experiences of child refugees who escaped Nazi Europe.

This launch represents a significant advancement in Holocaust Centre North’s mission to preserve and share the histories of those who found safety and formed new communities across the region.

Image Credit: Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of David Berglas

Three Years of Dedicated Work

The creation and digitisation of these new galleries has taken three years, achieved through close collaboration with the families of Holocaust survivors and refugees who settled in northern towns and cities, including Leeds, Manchester, Huddersfield, Liverpool, Hull, and Bradford.

Many letters, photographs, and documents are now publicly accessible online for the first time.

The galleries form a key part of the Centre’s Homeward Bound archiving project, an ambitious effort to catalogue and digitise its entire collection.

With more than 21,000 unique items now recorded and searchable, the archive has expanded dramatically from its original 6,000 items.

The new platform allows global audiences, including researchers, schools, artists, community groups, and descendants of survivors, to explore the archive autonomously and in depth.

Stories of Rescue, Belonging, and Survival

A central feature of the new digital offering is a substantial collection from the Bradford Hostel for Jewish refugees, which provided sanctuary to twenty-four teenage boys and one girl who fled Germany and Austria during the Second World War.

Another gallery presents images of precious objects carried by survivors on their journeys to safety, including cushions, board games, Seder plates and handmade toys.

These items, entrusted to the Centre by families, reveal intimate narratives of loss and survival.

Among them is a pair of gloves recently donated by Lesley Schatzberger, originally belonging to her grandfather and brought to Britain from Vienna by a relative.

The Child Refugee gallery highlights lesser-known histories, such as that of the Schrötter family, who lived in Albania before immigrating to the UK.

Their story sheds light on Albania’s little-known role in sheltering Jewish refugees. One of the images now available shows young Eric Schrötter on a beach in Durrës with other refugee children in 1939.

Image Credit: Holocaust Centre North Archive, courtesy of Paul Shafar

“A Huge Achievement”

After three years of meticulous work, the Centre’s Collections Team has produced a resource that stands among the leading global destinations for Holocaust education and research.

Holocaust Centre North Archivist Hari Jonkers, who played a key role in securing funding and overseeing the cataloguing, said: “It is hugely exciting that we can now share curated highlights from our Archive via our new online galleries.

“This launch is just the beginning, and we will be gradually adding more themed galleries as we continue the vital work of cataloguing and digitising our collections.

“Digitisation allows us to protect and safeguard our rare and fragile original materials, whilst opening up access so that many more people can find out about the compelling family stories and collections we look after.

“It is a huge achievement for us as a Holocaust Centre in the North of England, one I am very proud of.”

The platform is free to access, ensuring that powerful personal histories from the Holocaust can continue to be explored, studied, and understood by people around the world.