O.52.2 - Documentation prepared for the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany - North-West Communities

O.52.2 - Documentation prepared for the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany - North-West Communities 
 
 The purpose of the Yad Vashem project - to prepare an Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany - is to perpetuate the history of the communities that were destroyed during the Holocaust. The historiography of the communities focused on countries and sometimes on districts, but not on the history of the local communities. This project is meant to fill in what is lacking in this area. With the increase of interest in the local communities, this Record Group serves as a very important source for historians and researchers working in this field.
 
 The Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany - North-West Communities - is a joint project of Yad Vashem and the State of Lower Saxony in Germany.
 
 As part of the preparation of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany, many sources were gathered during the 1960s regarding the history of the communities. As part of these preparations, letters were sent to municipalities and local authorities in West Germany, requesting that they complete a questionnaire regarding the fate of the Jews who had lived in those places during the Nazi period. Many of the municipalities and authorities sent lists of the Jewish residents who had lived in these places, including details regarding the fate of the Jews. Additionally, the staff working on the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Germany checked local news items in the main German-Jewish newspapers regarding the Nazi period, as well as information from two newspapers published outside Germany (the London "Jewish Chronicle" and the Jewish weekly newspaper published in Switzerland) in which there were news items that could not be published in Germany. The data they found regarding the communities was recorded on file cards.
 
 A file was created for each community that would have an entry in the Encyclopedia, and the sources that were collected relating to the community were assembled in the file: photocopies of articles and archival documents, file cards with information that appeared in the newspapers and other sources, statistical data, and so on.
 
 As the project progressed, rough drafts for each Encyclopedia entry regarding a community were added to the file. Upon the completion of the project and the transfer of the material for publication, the files were handed over for safekeeping in the Yad Vashem Archives.
 
 Included in the collection are files that were prepared for the writing of the history of the North-West Communities, including the Communities in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenburg, Lippe and Hamburg. The files of the communities of North-West Germany are arranged according to the States or Prussian provinces, and these are arranged in alphabetical order.
 
 In the collection there are also files of correspondence with the various municipalities in the State, to which Yad Vashem turned, as mentioned, with a request to receive information regarding the Jews there. 
 
 The material is an anthology of very detailed information regarding the history of the Jewish communities in Germany throughout their years of existence and until their destruction by the Nazis.