PERSONAL papers and testimonies of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees who rebuilt their lives in the North of England can now be accessed online, thanks to an ambitious archive project.
Holocaust Centre North has completed the first phase of its Homeward Bound Initiative - a three-year archive cataloguing its extensive Holocaust collection. Now, for the very first time, more than 70 of its original collections of personal papers and testimonies of Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees can be accessed via The National Archives website.
The project makes this compelling collection more accessible to anyone with an interest in Holocaust history - academics, artists, schools, community groups, students, creative practitioners, researchers and survivors’ families.
Following months of painstaking work by the centre’s archivist, the service enables global online access to its collections, putting the centre closer to becoming a world-class destination for Holocaust Education and Research.
The level of access and depth of information is invaluable for worldwide Holocaust education, and the cataloguing has also benefitted the centre’s Collections and Learning staff, who have gained a greater understanding of the collection, its stories and the survivors.
Whilst cataloguing the testimony of a Holocaust survivor, the archivist noticed the name David Berglas, a ‘”famous magician” whose family showed kindness to the interviewee’s husband as a newly arrived refugee. Head of Collections Dr Tracy Craggs subsequently interviewed David and digitised some of his extensive collection of family photographs. David died not long afterwards in November 2023, but it is thanks to the development of the catalogue that Holocaust Centre North could develop this connection - the kind of connection which is the bedrock its work.
One of the items in the collection is a spice box that belonged to Marianne Leavor, the wife of Rudi Leavor, former chairman of Bradford Synagogue.
Cataloguing led the Collections team to establish a stronger connection with Gail Simon, whose grandparents managed to get out of Berlin and obtain a visa to run a hostel for Kindertransport boys in Bradford. The Bradford Jewish Refugee Hostel in Manningham was home to 24 boys. Gail has since donated personal records of her family, institutional records from the hostel, as well as photographs and a home video, and a Menorah made by one of the hostel’s residents.
The search for former residents and their descendants is ongoing and anybody with information or connections to the Hostel are urged to come forwards to Holocaust Centre North.
Descriptions of Gail’s records and the hostel’s archives can be viewed via The National Archives for the first time as part of this cataloguing initiative.
For Holocaust Centre North Archivist Hari Jonkers, who has been instrumental in securing funding for the digitisation and the hands-on cataloguing (together with Archives Assistant Barbora Vackova), the project has been a labour of love.
Says Hari: “On a personal level, it has been thoroughly enjoyable getting to know the archive better and, as a result, becoming better equipped to support Holocaust Centre North’s team and external users to share in the richness of these extraordinarily compelling collections.
“Sharing ‘new discoveries’ with colleagues is incredibly rewarding and has increased staff awareness of the work that archivists do, which can often be hidden. Cataloguing has already enabled us to strengthen our existing relationships within the Northern community of Holocaust survivors and their descendants and to seek out and develop new relationships.
“It has been a crucial learning curve, illustrating the depth and dedication cataloguing demands within archival operations. “As an organisation devoted to ‘fostering a culture of care’ when engaging with traumatic stories, this work has also taught our team that an archive is the perfect place to foster that culture of care.
“It is exciting and rewarding to see the fruits of our hard work online at The National Archives so that these remarkable and vital Holocaust histories can be preserved and accessed globally.”
The initial digitisation of Holocaust Centre North’s archives and collections has been funded as part of the Archives Revealed Grant managed by The National Archives. Visit discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Work is now starting on Phase 2, which involves meticulous scanning and photographing of the collection’s materials. The Centre aims to make digitised collections available by the end of December 2025 through a collection browser on its website.
* Holocaust Centre North was founded in the mid-1990s by survivors and refugees of the Holocaust in Leeds with the aim of providing friendship and community support. It has had a permanent home on the University of Huddersfield campus since 2018.
Its archive contains the collections of around 120 families who rebuilt their lives in the North of England following persecution and genocide. The stories preserved are ones of discrimination, displacement, migration, forced labour, loss, difficult decisions, and building new lives in the North.
The Centre works to ensure that the atrocities of Nazi persecution are never forgotten.
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