The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project seeks to transform archival research on the Holocaust. The vision of EHRI is to integrate the data, services and expertise of existing Holocaust infrastructures on an unprecedented scale. It will allow researchers from across the globe transnational and virtual access to the integrated infrastructure, and provide them with innovative digital tools and methods to (collaboratively) explore and analyse Holocaust sources. EHRI will thereby become an indispensable tool for the study of the Holocaust from a pan-European perspective. EHRI is based on an advanced community that has already achieved a significant co-ordination of its efforts, not least thanks to the activities undertaken during EHRI's first phase. The aim of the second phase is to further expand this community. The EHRI consortium includes 22 partners, spread across Europe and beyond. This consortium, as well as a network of regional contact points, enables EHRI to reach those regions where much valuable Holocaust source material is located, but where access has hitherto been problematic, especially in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. EHRI includes measures to build capacity in such regions, thereby ensuring that institutions and people across Europe can contribute to, and make use of, the EHRI infrastructure. EHRI will continue to serve as a 'best practice' model for other humanities projects, and its innovative approach to data integration, management and retrieval will have impact in the wider cultural and IT industries. Although EHRI is geared towards scholarly communities, open online availability of reliable Holocaust material is important for the larger public, as the Holocaust is deeply rooted in the development of European societies. European support for the study of this most traumatic historical event is essential to achieve a comprehensive approach to the history of the Holocaust as a shared European phenomenon.

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.