The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure’s (EHRI) mission is to overcome widespread dispersal of Holocaust sources. EHRI is an advanced community comprising 23 partners from 17 countries across Europe, Israel and the United States. It is an inter-disciplinary community spanning Holocaust research, archival sciences and the digital humanities. In two previous Integrating Activities, EHRI has integrated an unprecedented amount of information about dispersed Holocaust sources in an online Portal, developed tools to contextualise, analyse and interpret such sources, and set new impulses with regard to inter-disciplinary and trans-national research. EHRI’s past achievements have been recognised, not least by European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) who adopted EHRI on its 2018 Roadmap. The aim of the EHRI-3 project is to move decisively beyond the achieved state-of-the-art. In particular, while EHRI has already integrated the holdings of the major Holocaust RIs, much valuable source material that is held by small local and micro-archives is currently inaccessible to the research communities. EHRI-3 will develop protocols and tools that allow the open up of hidden sources for Holocaust research. EHRI-3 will further enable new trans-national approaches to the study of the Holocaust by developing innovative layers across dispersed sources that connect thematically related, but physically dispersed, collections. It will greatly enhance its access provisions, and integrate new communities – local research and archive networks, universities, researchers working in closely related fields – into its network. Although EHRI is geared towards scholarly communities, the Holocaust is deeply rooted in the development of European societies. EHRI-3 will continue to be a showcase of how a humanities RI can inform societal discourse in areas such as antisemitism, xenophobia, non-discrimination and religious and cultural tolerance.

The project aims to write refugees back into the history of East-Central Europe in the 20th century. In this “age of refugees”, the region became a destination of large refugee migrations, forcing civil societies and governments to negotiate difficult decisions about protection for those fleeing the war and persecution. Yet, at the same time, East-Central Europe does not enjoy the reputation as a welcoming place for people persecuted for political persuasion, for their “racial”, ethnic identity or any other reason. It would appear that the histories of ethnic conflict and violence, political oppression and economic underdevelopment make it a place to leave behind rather than to search for as a safe harbour. Studies about specific groups and instances notwithstanding, historical research remains highly unsatisfactory, failing to address refugee protection in a systematic comparative way and transcending national master narratives. Worse than this, historical writing about refugees in the “East” often re-inscribes the very (ethnic, political) categories which lead to the production of refugees in the first place. Comparative research spanning across a longer period and a wider territory promises therefore not only major insights about the “East” as a refuge, but also a significant contribution to the emerging field of global refugee history. In this project, an international research team led by the PI will, using comparative historical research combined with multi-disciplinary approaches, probe the multifaceted entanglements with refugees in countries created in 1918 on the ruins of the Habsburg Monarchy (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia) over the 20th century. By doing so, it wishes to return the discussion of protection of refugees into the region’s history and to contribute – from a scholarly perspective – to the cultivation of current and future public debate about this divisive subject.

The vision of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is to secure seamless access to all sources and expertise from across Europe and beyond that are relevant to the study of the Holocaust. It approaches this vision through the development of a pan-European distributed Research Infrastructure that brings together the leading facilities and offers users integrated access to Holocaust resources, expertise and training. In 2018, EHRI was added to the ESFRI Roadmap, and is currently finalising a step-1 application to establish a new European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), supported by eleven countries. The EHRI-IP project will facilitate EHRI’s implementation phase and ensure a timely start of its operation as an ERIC. The EHRI-IP consortium consists of representatives from the emerging national nodes of the eleven countries that expressed support for establishing EHRI as an ERIC, as well as partners from Ukraine and the United States. This consortium will undertake a set of coordinated activities that will advance EHRI’s maturity and capabilities and remove any remaining roadblocks to its implementation and early operation. The project will achieve three overall objectives: (i) to implement EHRI by finalising the governance, establishing an operation-ready Central Hub and linked National Nodes, and turning existing high-level scientific, user and technological strategies into operational reality; (ii) to grow EHRI by acquiring new potential Member and Observer countries, negotiating cooperation agreements with international and strategic partners, and investigating the scope for a future expansion of EHRI with regards to the scientific domain covered, services offered and user communities served; (iii) to manage and valorise EHRI by coordinating between EHRI-IP and concurrent activities, and developing strategies that ensure that EHRI reaches its full potential with regards to innovation and social, economic and scientific impact.

The Preparatory Phase project of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is an outcome of EHRI’s adoption on the 2018 Roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). The EHRI-PP project aims to bring EHRI to the level of financial, legal and technical maturity required for its implementation as a permanent European RI in the domain of Holocaust studies and archives. In particular, the project will ensure the long-term sustainability of EHRI through the drafting of a sound business plan that links EHRI’s scientific case, user and access policy and value proposition to a robust governance structure, legal framework and a financial plan. It will further ensure EHRI’s timely implementation by developing a detailed implementation plan and by negotiating firm financial commitments from national stakeholders. The EHRI-PP project will be carried out by a consortium of 15 partners from 13 countries that have jointly developed EHRI in the context of two EU-funded Integrating Activities since 2010. The consortium includes the major Holocaust RIs in Europe, Israel and the United States. EHRI’s scientific mission is to overcome the enormous fragmentation of Holocaust archives and research. It approaches this mission through the development of a pan-European distributed RI that offers virtual and trans-national access to source material, and promotes the exchange of resources, knowledge and expertise across disciplinary and geographic boundaries. EHRI also plays an important societal role. It ensures that Holocaust commemoration is based on sound scientific research and informed by authoritative archival sources. EHRI thereby contributes to the development of open and non-discriminatory societies across Europe. By consolidating EHRI’s previous achievements and results into a new, sustainable, distributed RI, EHRI-PP will secure Europe’s place at the forefront of Holocaust documentation and research for the long-term.