Dr. Wiener foresaw the danger of the Nazi
phenomena and devoted himself to collecting
thorough documentation, in order to reveal to the world the true
face of National Socialism. By doing so he wished to combat the Nazi
machine and record its horrors for posterity.

In 1939, when it became dangerous for the library to remain in Amsterdam, it was transferred to London. There it opened on the day of the outbreak of the war. In London the library developed into an extensive and respected research and information center, headed by Dr. Wiener until his death in 1964.

Throughout the war, the Ministry of Information and the Allied Governments apparently made wide use of the library. The success of BBC counter-propaganda derived largely from its solid grounding in the comprehensive and reliable information that had been gathered by Dr. Wiener. Since the war the staff worked hard on extending the scope of the library. Its resources played a vital role in the charges leveled against war criminals at Nuremberg; served legal authorities and courts; the news media; scholars and research students from all over the world as well as prominent authors on the subject.

In 1980, 47 years after the rise of Nazi Germany, the Wiener Library was transferred from London to Tel Aviv University.

The continuously growing library comprises publications on the Third Reich, Europe during and between the two world wars, Jewish communities in Europe, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and fascism throughout the world.

The publications include approximately 150,000 books, reference works, pamphlets and journals ; over one million indexed newspaper clippings, unpublished memoirs and interviews ; around 40,000 documents on the Nuremberg trials ; various editions and extensive literature on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ; dossiers on war criminals ; documents on the Jewish Question taken from records of the Gestapo, the Reichskanzlei and the Foreign Office of the Third Reich ; more than 500 microfilm and microfiche titles and 300 subscriptions to journals, both Holocaust and extreme right wing/Holocaust denial.

Today the library is open to students, researchers from Israel and abroad and the general public. International conferences and research seminars on relevant topics take place on the Wiener Library premises situated on the Tel Aviv University campus.

For additional information, please read the article
"Spotlight on the Wiener Library" (Tel Aviv University News, 2012).

 Back To Top