Participants are invited to present their findings pertaining to the early attempts to document the mass destruction of European Jews during WWII in a comparative perspective. The period covered by the papers is expected to range from, but is not strictly limited to, the beginning of WWII to the end of the 1950s, before the growth of scholarly interest in the Holocaust. We would especially like to deepen our knowledge of documentation projects which have been researched to a lesser extent, often those from Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe.

The overall aim of the EHRI, to connect and to make accessible Holocaust-related archival material, raises the principal issue of the origins of these collections. In order to understand the structure, contents, and historical value of the sources preserved in European archives and other documentation centers, we must explore who created these collections and how they were created: what were the political circumstances, resources and motivations surrounding these early documentary projects.