IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference code(s): GB 1556 WL 1281
Held at: Wiener Library
Title: International Auschwitz Committee: Correspondence and papers
Date(s): 1959
Level of description: collection
Extent: 1 file
Name of creator(s): International Auschwitz Committee
CONTEXT
Administrative/Biographical history:
The Internationale Auschwitz Komitee (IAK) was founded in 1952 by former inmates of the death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, with the following aims: to bear witness to the crimes of the Nazis in the camp; to fight for compensation for former inmates and their families; to work with the Auschwitz Museum to preserve the site of the camp as a permanent memorial. The IAK became involved in the gathering of statements and testimony against former camp guards and other Nazi personnel. Many of the witnesses who provided testimony later took part in the 'Frankfurt Trial' of perpetrators at Auschwitz.
Hermann Langbein (1912-1995), secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee was an Austrian who fought in the Spanish Civil War with the International Brigades for the Spanish Republicans against the Nationalists under Francisco Franco. He was interned in France after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and then sent to German concentration camps after the fall of France in 1940. Over the next few years he was imprisoned in several different camps (Dachau, Auschwitz and others). He was among the leadership of the International Resistance groups in the camps he was held in. After 1945 he was General Secretary of the International Auschwitz Committee, and later Secretary of the 'Comite' Internationale des Camps'. Hermann Langbein was among those awarded the Righteous Among the Nations status by Yad Vashem.
CONTENT
Scope and content/abstract:
Papers of the Internationale Auschwitz Komitee (IAK), 1959, comprising short statements from former inmates at Auschwitz and correspondence between the IAK (including Hermann Langbein, secretary) and other organisations regarding the prosecution of perpetrators at Auschwitz, including Josef Mengele, Adolf Heinz Beckerle, Josef Klehr, Hermann Krumey, Adolf Eichmann and Paul Kümmel.
ACCESS AND USE
Language/scripts of material: German
System of arrangement:
Chronological
Conditions governing access:
Open
Conditions governing reproduction:
Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.
Finding aids:
Description exists to this archive on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Accruals:
Archival history:
Immediate source of acquisition:
Hermann Langbein
ALLIED MATERIALS
Related material:
Ref: 1173
DESCRIPTION NOTES
Archivist's note: Entry compiled by Howard Falksohn.
Date(s) of descriptions: February 2008