NOTE:
The resources listed here are mostly general, international and non-country specific. Country-specific resources are found on the individual country pages. We have divided the resources listed below into several general categories: Archives; General (history, culture, heritage); Maps & Mapping; Museums; Photographic Images; Postcard Collections; Videos & Video Channels. Links to Cemeteries resources are found separately and in the Cemeteries section of this web site.
ARCHIVES
The Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories at Indiana University, a linguistic and oral history project that includes Yiddish language interviews with approximately 380 people, most of whom were born between the 1900s and the 1930s. The interviews were conducted in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia between 2002 and 2012.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
The JDC (JOINT), the Jewish relief agency founded in 1914, has put its vast Archives online as a searchable database
Central Archives of the Jewish People
Giv’at Ram Campus, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
P.O.B. 39077
Jerusalem 91390
Tel. +972 2 6586249
Email: archives@vms.huji.ac.il
Established in 1939, the Archive holds the archives of hundreds of Jewish communities and local, national and international Jewish organizations, as well as the collections of a number of prominent individuals. They constitute the most extensive collection of documents, pinkassim (registers) and other records of Jewish history from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) News Archive
JTA has digitized its news archive, from 1917 onwards, as a searchable database. There are numerous articles about Jewish heritage sites
A rich repository of a wide variety of material, much of it digitized.
Yerusha: Jewish Archives Europe
A sister project to Jewish Heritage Europe of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe. A listing and description of Jewish archives and archives with Jewish content.
GENERAL (HISTORY; CULTURE; HERITAGE)
AEPJ – European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage
Promotes and loosely coordinates the annual European Days of Jewish Culture, held in many countries across Europe on the first Sunday in September. It also coordinated the European Routes of Jewish Heritage with thematic routes and routes to Jewish heritage in various individual countries.
The Beit Project: Creating Consciousness; Jewish Heritage and European Identity
And international project aimed at using Jewish heritage sites as a focus of meaningful social debate to promote tolerance and understanding between all local cultures
The Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Founded by Professor Bezalel Narkiss in 1979. Activities include documentation, research, education and publishing. The Center’s archives and collections comprise about 180,000 pictures, sketches and documents, including photographs and architectural drawings of synagogues. These are now being digitized and put online, in a database shared with Israel’s National Library. By early 2014, some 42,000 items had been digitized. Another major project is the Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art, an iconographical Jewish art database, which has now been digitized and put online.
Catalogue of Wall Paintings in Central and Eastern European Synagogues
A wealth of descriptive material and images from 145 synagogues in 11 countries in the region
Database and interactive map on more tha 3,000 standing pre-WW2 synagogues in 48 countries, with information on construction, style, current use and condition, and threats.
Online photographic database of CJA’s Jewish art & heritage collections
Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People
The museum’s wide-ranging web site has extensive links and databases on Jewish heritage sites, Jewish communities worldwide, synagogues, genealogy, and much more.
Center for Jewish History, New York
The Center for Jewish History, located in New York, is the home of five Jewish institutions dedicated to history, culture, and art. It is comprised of:
The American Jewish Historical Society
The American Sephardi Federation
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Center for Jewish History — Digital Collections
Access to a variety of digital objects, including rare books, children’s books, personal letters, official decrees, maps, memoirs, posters, photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories, finding aids, dissertations, and more.
CENTROPA: Connecting the World to the Lands of Jewish Heritage
Includes photographs, links, interviews, articles, recipes, films, travel information, educations material. Operated by the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation.
Claims Conference/WJRO Looted Art & Cultural Property Initiative
Essential links, resources and information regarding looted art and other cultural property for provenance researchers; staffs of museums, libraries, and other repositories; art and Judaica dealers; archivists and historians – as well as individual and family claimants and the general public.
European Association for Jewish Studies
The sole umbrella organization representing this field of university studies in Europe. Its aims are the encouragement and support of the research and teaching of Jewish studies at university level in Europe, and other places of higher education and learning.
European Center for Jewish Music
An institute at the Hanover, Germany University of Music, Drama and Media
European Holocaust Research Infrastructure
A portal designed to implement a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) offering online access to a wide variety of dispersed Holocaust archives and to a number of tools to work with them. Building on integration programs undertaken over the past decades by the 20 partners in the consortium and a large network of associate partners, EHRI “sets out to transform the data available for Holocaust research around Europe and elsewhere into a cohesive body of resources.”
European Institute for Jewish Music
An Institute based in Paris dedicated to the documentation and resources pertaining to Jewish music in Europe. It was created in 2006 by the French Judaism Foundation, the Yuval association and the Henriette Halphen Foundation.
European Sites of Remembrance — Information Portal
An interactive web site with links to numerous Holocaust memorial sites, museums and related places in Europe, accessible via an ineractive map. It is is a project of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation and forms part of the exhibition of the Information Center under the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
A web site and publishing channel that highlights the news and developments in the world of Jewish philanthropy, including projects, funders, issues.
European Shoah Legacy Institute
A public benefit corporation set up by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010 as a follow-up to the Terezin Declaration endorsed by representatives of 47 states, who met in June 2009 in Prague and Terezin at the Holocaust Era Assets Conference organized by the Czech Presidency of the European Union Council. Its role is to seek – in cooperation with governments, non-governmental organizations and independent experts – systemic solutions on an international level leading to restitution of immovable property, art, Judaica and Jewish cultural assets stolen by the Nazis; provision of adequate social welfare to Holocaust (Shoah) survivors and other victims of Nazism; and promotion of Holocaust education, research and remembrance.
Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture
Many links and online resources.
Foundation for Jewish Heritage
Foundation promoting the preservation, restoration, and documentation of Historic Synagogues in Europe.
A networks of charities, governmental, religious and university department that work to protect religious heritage buildings and interiors across Europe. Its news feed features links to article on these topics.
Digitlized collections from a variety of international museums, including several with Jewish content.
Haruth: All Things Jewish (lots of links)
Database and interactive map on more that 3,000 standing pre-WW2 synagogues in 48 countries, with information on construction, style, current use and condition, and threats. A joint project of the Center for Jewish Art and the Foundation for Jewish Heritage.
International Survey of Jewish Monuments
Pioneering organization devoted to Jewish built heritage. The site includes the archives of its one-time periodical, the Jewish Heritage Report.
Web site of a 4-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council commencing in October 2019. The project focuses on country houses owned, renewed and sometimes built by Jews and those of Jewish origin. Its aim is to “write these houses and their owners back into British, European and Jewish history and to establish their importance as sites of European – and Jewish – memory.”
A searchable online database of Jewish artifacts and cultural heritage. It has taken over the archives of Judaica Europeana and aims at developing Jewish digital heritage projects and services.
Jewish People Around the World
Web site with sections on Jewish communities, synagogues, monuments, etc
Jewish Virtual History Tour (Western Europe)
A comprehensive online Jewish site, with many links and articles about specific countries.
Wide-ranging resources and online exhibitions, including a photographic exhibition of World Holocaust Memorials (including 19 European countries)
A blog that features some excellent documentation and photographs of Jewish heritage sites in Europe.
A web site about Sephardic studies and Ladino, with many links to academic and other resources.
A web portal serving as an “information hub” with links to Spanish and Portuguese synagogues and Jewish communities.
Synagogue Art Research web site
A web site that draws on and summarizes the decades-long research work of Rivka and Ben Zion Dorfman, who documented synagogue buildings and Jewish communities in centeral and eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. Their research was published inthe book Synagogues without Jews (Jewish Publication Society, 2001)
U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad
1400 K Street, NW-Ste. 401
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: (202) 254-3824
Fax: (202) 254-3934
Email: uscommission@heritageabroad.gov
An independent agency of the U.S. Government that aims to (1) identify and report on cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that are associated with the heritage of U.S. citizens, particularly endangered properties, and (2) obtain, in cooperation with the Department of State, assurances from the governments of the region that the properties will be protected and preserved. The commission has overseen ground-breaking inventory surveys of Jewish heritage sites in several countries that can be accessed here: http://heritageabroad.gov/Reports.aspx It also organizes or oversees projects that help restore, preserve, and memorialize cultural heritage properties, including Jewish cemeteries, monuments and historic buildings.
350 Fifth Avenue
Suite 2412
New York, NY 10118
Tel: 646-424-9594
Fax: 646-424-9593
Email: wmf@wmf.org
World center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust.
Authoritative online encyclopedia of Jewish history, culture and heritage in (mainly) Eastern Europe.
Zalman Schachter Center — Journey into Jewish Heritage
Information and results of student research trips documenting Jewish heritage in Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Slovakia, Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Center also has a rich and extensive YouTube channel that posts videos documenting the expeditions.
MAPS AND MAPPING
Valuable resource including digitized detailed cadastral maps from the historic Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. Digital images of maps in the inventory are being acquired with permission from collections covering historic Galicia, in modern Austria, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Israel, and the United States. Historic maps were often produced on multiple sheets; to display the maps here, typically the individual sheets are digitally stitched together and then tiled to simplify viewing in a web browser.
Mapire — Historic Maps of the Habsburg Empire
Old maps from the Habsburg Empire and Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, published using modern GIS technologies. Users can compare old maps with today maps (Google or OpenStreetMap), also in 3 dimensions.
Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire
Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Study
Faculty of Divinity
West Road
Cambridge CB3 9BS England
Email: byzantium@divinity.cam.ac.uk
An ambitious project to map the Jewish presence in the former Byzantine Empire and collate, digitize and publish physical and archival information.
Topographic Maps of Eastern Europe
Maps and related links, focusing on Eastern Europe and the Pale of Settlement.
MUSEUMS
Association of European Jewish Museums
The Association’s web site has links to around 60 Jewish museums in 20 countries.
Jewish and Holocaust Museums Listing
Links to web sites and contact numbers for Jewish museums and Holocaust museums around the world.
A membership organization for people working in museums, galleries and heritage.
Online resource that shares examples of new developments and innovations in museums and galleries, from technology to new ways of interpreting objects and storing collections.
PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES
Center for Jewish Art’s online photographic database of Jewish art & heritage collections
Center for Jewish Art’s Narkiss Index of Jewish Art
Center for Jewish Art’s Catalogue of Wall Paintings in Central and Eastern European Synagogues
A wealth of descriptive material and images from 145 synagogues in 11 countries in the region
CENTROPA: Connecting the World to the Lands of Jewish Heritage
Includes photographs, links, interviews, articles, recipes, films, travel information, educations material. Operated by the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation.
College of Charleston Library, Rabbi William A. Rosenthall Collection
The collection includes postcards and other images of synagogues around the globe, including European synagogues destroyed by the Nazis or converted to stables and warehouses. Many of the synagogue images have been digitized and are viewable online from the main web page. Images from the collection form the basis of the online Life of the Synagogue exhibition.
Jewish Photo Library — HaChayim HaYehudim
Jono David’s collection of thousands of photographs of Jewish heritage sites, Holocaust memorials, Judaica and other images related to Jewish culture.
German photographer Peter Seidel’s web site, with a collection of his images of mikvehs – ritual baths – ancient to modern, in several countries.
Thousands of photos of pre-World War II Jewish life by Roman Vishniac, digitized and available in a searchable database
Synagogue Images and Jewish Communal History in Many Countries (Edward Victor Collection)
Photographs of synagogues and images of synagogues on stamps and postcards in many countries, combined with historical background and description. Edward Victor donated his collection to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust but maintains a web site with extensive material.
Interactive, 360-degree panoramic images — as well as other images — of scores of synagogues in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
Synagogues of Europe, Past and Present
Collection of nearly 600 synagogue photos from more than 30 European countries. Part of the online Museum of Family History.
A photo gallery of pre-WW2 wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe.
POSTCARD COLLECTIONS
College of Charleston Library, Rabbi William A. Rosenthall Collection (postcards)
The collection includes postcards and other images of synagogues around the globe, including European synagogues destroyed by the Nazis or converted to stables and warehouses.
Jewish Postcards Collection — Frantisek Banyai’s Collection
Hundreds of images of synagogues, Judaica and other Jewish sites and themes in Europe.
Jewish Postcards Collection — Stephanie Comfort’s Collection
Thousands of images from all around the world, including synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish heritage sites.
VIDEOS AND VIDEO CHANNELS
Jewish Discoveries — video mini-docs of Jewish quarters and heritage sites
Zalman Schachter Center — Journey into Jewish Heritage
The Center has a rich and extensive YouTube channel that posts videos documenting the expeditions to towns and cities in Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Slovakia, Bosnia-Hercegovina