Religion Collections in Libraries and Archives: A Guide to Resources in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia Table of Contents - Preface/Acknowledgements - Abbreviations Lists of Entries: District of Columbia - Maryland - Virginia

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Photo Archive

Access Policies

Appointments are suggested for the Photo Archive. The Photo Archive can reproduce materials either owned by the Museum or in the public domain; fees are set to recover the cost of research and reproduction.

Reference Policy:

The Photo Archive accepts limited telephone and mail reference questions.

Borrowing Privileges:

Not a lending institution.

Networks/Consortia:

OCLC, FEDLINK, Association of Jewish Libraries, RLG.

Background Note:

The Holocaust Memorial Council founded the Museum in 1980. The Photo Archive was founded in 1989, and opened to the public in 1993.

Description of Collections

Paintings, photographs and slides:

Over 50,000 images (about 35,000 prints, the rest photographs), gathered from more than 350 archives and private sources and dating largely from 1933 to 1948. There is also a small selection of prewar materials from various Jewish communities in Europe. The Photo Archive maintains reciprocal arrangements with Yad Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters House in Israel, and the State Memorial Museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, in order to make available images from these institutions. Among the subjects covered in the collection are concentration camps and Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe; anti-Semitism; deportations and executions; Jewish life in Nazi Germany and Austria; the life of Jewish refugees in China and Japan, Palestine/Israel, the United States, and elsewhere; and the persecution of Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses by the Nazis.

A computer imaging system provides access to database records and digitized images by subject, geographic location, and keyword. Reproductions of digitized images are available for a fee.

Subject Headings

Bibliography

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [Online]. Available HTTP. URL http://www.ushmm.org/. Accessed February 1997.