By Andy Hirst

A major exhibition about the agonising search for the missing after the Holocaust is coming to Huddersfield.

The exhibition called Fate Unknown: The Search for the Missing after the Holocaust will be at the Holocaust Centre North which is in Schwann Building in the University of Huddersfield from November 9-23.

The exhibition has been organised by the Wiener Holocaust Library in London,  home to the UK’s International Tracing Service Digital Archive which holds millions of documents related to the Holocaust and Nazi era.

This exhibition tells the remarkable, little-known story of the search for the missing after the Holocaust. It considers the legacy of the search for descendants of those affected by World War Two and the impact of those who fate was never known.

By the end of the war millions of people had been murdered or displaced by war and genocide. Families and communities were torn apart. Many were missing and some people’s fates remain unclear to this day.

Despite immense logistical challenges, a number of charities such as the British Red Cross Society and the Jewish Relief Unit attempted to help find missing people and reunite families. Their efforts came together what became known as the International Tracing Service.  

The exhibition is free and anyone is welcome to see it.

On Wednesday, November 23, there will be a family history workshop at Holocaust Centre North from 3.30pm to 5.30pm to give people advice on how to navigate the International Tracing Service Digital Archive and explore how use it for your own research. It will be led by The Wiener Holocaust Library’s ITS archive team manager Elise Bath and Holocaust Centre North’s archivist Hari Jonkers.

The workshop is free but people wanting to attend must register at https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/event/postgraduate-and-family-history-workshop/

Immediately after this event at Holocaust Centre North there will be a talk from 6pm to 8pm by Dr Christine Schmidt and Professor Dan Stone who curated the exhibition Fate Unknown: The Search for the Missing after the Holocaust.

To register for this talk go to https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/event/fate-unknown-the-search-for-the-missing-after-the-holocaust-curators-talk-and-drinks-reception/

* Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging and copywriting.