The documentation center library has 32,000 works on the persecution and destruction of Europe’s Jews, the anti-Nazi resistance, the Second World War, anti-Semitism and the 20th-century history of Jewish communities around the world.
Since its inception in 1943, the collections of the library of the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine have focused on:
Today, 32,000 works in various languages (French, English, German, Polish, etc.) are available to the public, including books, journals, university research papers, Yizker Bikher (memorial books commemorating Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust), press reviews and clippings and periodicals. A large collection of documents (books and periodicals) in Yiddish and Hebrew may also be consulted on request.
The multi-disciplinary collections cover the persecution and extermination of Europe’s Jews, the Resistance, the Second World War and anti-Semitism from various perspectives.
The library is not limited to the Holocaust. It also has collections on the interwar period, the persecution of other groups and the 20th-century history of Jewish communities around the world.
The library possesses many rare works, including collections of clandestine texts, testimonies written and published immediately after the war, writings by collaborators, Nazi propaganda recovered at the Nuremberg trials and a large group of materials on the Dreyfus affair.
Part of the documentation center’s digitized catalogue can be consulted online. Several databases are available in their entirety in the Shoah Memorial’s reading room. The abridged version is expanded and developed on a regular basis. Some collections, in particular documents and photographs from private sources, will not be put online.
Any reproduction requests must be made in person at the Memorial. Visitors wishing to obtain photocopies of documents are kindly requested to go to the documentation center’s reading room.
The online catalogue includes the following databases:
> The documentation center’s opening times
Informations : contact the library
The Shoah Memorial’s historians have compiled two very complete bibliographies. The first, which is very detailed, spans the entire history of the destruction of the Jews of Europe. The second, which is more succinct, covers the situation of Jews in France under Vichy.
Download the bibliographies in PDF format (the PDFs are in French):
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE HOLOCAUST (PDF)
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE SITUATION OF JEWS IN FRANCE UNDER VICHY (PDF)