“Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity's common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.”
-- Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust
Researchers are often faced with the challenge that historical sources are dispersed throughout various archives, collections, museums and memorials. Complementary data and information are grouped and catalogued following the logic of the individual institutions, and not necessarily with other institutions' collections or with potential users and researchers in mind.
At the IHRA Plenary Meetings, which took place in Bern from 27 - 30 November 2017, the founders of the Network War Collections – Netwerk Oorlongsbronnen from the Netherlands were invited to talk to IHRA delegates about how they are seeking to address this challenge by bringing archival material together in one digital space, creating a basic thesaurus and providing context - an initiative relevant to IHRA's goal to ensure access to documents bearing on the Holocaust.
