The Photo Archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Abstract

The primary function of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is educational. Its secondary role, no less important, is to preserve and record the history of the Holocaust for future generations. In this regard, the collection and preservation of photographs, textual records and artefacts that enable us to study this tragic period are of paramount importance. ‘After Daguerre, every man's family acquired a visual past: a tangible link with the history of the species’, wrote John Szarkowski in Looking at Photographs.1 Now, after many years of dogged collecting, the ‘family’ of Holocaust survivors has a heavily documented visual past lodged at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Established in 1989, the photo archive of the Museum now counts 60 000 photographs in its roster. The photographs document Jewish life throughout the world before the Second World War, as well as the history of the persecution and extermination of Europe's Jews as well as non-Jewish victims. It is one of the largest such repositories in the world and one which historians, journalists and researchers ask to use every day.