General information
Trans-national Holocaust research, commemoration and education is the mission of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI). The EHRI Portal enables online access to information about Holocaust sources. The Conny Kristel Fellowship gives researchers access to the resources of twenty leading Holocaust archives. EHRI’s extensive programme of networking and training brings people together. Last but not least, EHRI promotes innovative tools that advance the digital transformation of Holocaust research.
EHRI started as a European project at the end of 2010. Since January 2025 it turned into an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium). Ten countries were founding members of EHRI-ERIC: Austria, Croatia, Germany, Israel, Poland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Kazerne Dossin and EHRI
Kazerne Dossin has been a consortium partner in EHRI since 2016. But this was not the first contact for Kazerne Dossin. Right from the start there was a bond between the two. Knight Nathan Ramet, Holocaust survivor and founder of the Memorial and the museum in Mechelen, was present at the launch of EHRI in Brussels on 16 November 2010 and there have also been contacts between the research centre of Kazerne Dossin and EHRI since 2011 to share the archival collections managed in Mechelen via the EHRI portal.
Our learning process constituted Dossin’s first contribution to the EHRI Document Blog and can be consulted here. The history of the deportations from the Dossin barracks and the accompanying deportation lists formed a second blog entry, interpreting the archival documents and visually mapping out the deportations on a timeline.
Finally, we introduced the “Left Behind” project via the EHRI blog, which tells about the impact that the deportation of Jewish men from Antwerp for slave labour in Northern France had on their families who were left behind. Hence, we also demonstrated how new geo tools can help support and enrich research.
Veerle Vanden Daelen, Curator and Director Collections & Research at Kazerne Dossin, led the identification and integration of data in the EHRI Portal since April 2011—when she was still affiliated with CegeSoma— until February 2025. She is currently vice-chair of the EHRI Portal Content Working Group. Colleague Herminio García González is vice-chair of the EHRI Data Integration Working Group. He is also working with NIOD colleague Mike Bryant on the EHRI-KG OSCARS project. Several colleagues in Kazerne Dossin are actively contributing to this project whose international context and exchange activities signify a great enhancement of expertise and motivation for the entire team.
