International Conference, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union in Archival Documents. Current Issues in Identification, Access and Use of Records, Jerusalem, Israel

An international scholarly conference, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union in Archival Documents. Current Issues in Identification, Access and Use of Records took place on 18-20 October 2015 in Jerusalem, Israel. The conference organizer was the Yad Vashem National Memorial of the Holocaust and Heroism with the support of the Genesis Charitable Foundation.

Participants at the conference were representatives from eight countries (Belarus, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Israel, USA, Russia and Ukraine).

The Archival Service of the Republic of Belarus was represented at the conference by First Deputy of the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Justice Ministry O. Biryukova, Department’s Division Chief of Information and Records Use G. Zholnerkevich, Deputy Director of the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus E. Kushnova, Chief Archivist of the National Archives of the Republic of BelarusV. Selemenev and Director of the State Archives of Gomel Region P. Chyorny.

The conference discussed issues concerning access to records on the history of the Holocaust, digitization of archival fonds containing documents on the topic, the use of modern technologies in work with archival records, research projects on the history of the Holocaust on the internet, etc.

The conference participants delivered reports on the Jewish refugees and evacuated persons, prewar and postwar documents as a source of Holocaust studies, and other issues relating to the catastrophe of the Jewish people in the 1930s-1940s.

The conference included an excursion to the Yad Vashem Historical Museum.