The African & Middle Eastern Reading Room is the primary public access point for materials housed in the the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) which include a variety of vernacular scripts, such as Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Yiddish. Covering 77 countries from Morocco to Southern Africa to the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, the division's three sections--African, Hebraic, and Near East--offer in-depth reference assistance, provide substantive briefings on a wide range of subjects relating to these languages and cultures, produce guides to the Library's vast resources and cooperate in developing and preserving the Division's unparalleled collections.

The Holocaust-Era Judaic Heritage Library

Between 1949-1952, the Library of Congress received 5,708 books, pamphlets, periodicals, and newspaper issues from Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR), a New York-based umbrella organization that served as a trusteeship for the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust. By agreement, JCR received these "heirless" and "unidentifiable" books from the United States Military Government in Germany, which had taken exhaustive steps to identify and restitute items seized by the Nazi regime to their original owners or to their countries of origin. JCR subsequently distributed almost 500,000 of these orphaned books to scholarly institutions in the United States, Israel, Europe, and Latin America. Items that the Library of Congress received from JCR bear a unique bookplate marking their special provenance. In addition -- through federal transfers that occurred before JCR began its distributions in 1949 -- the Library received approximately 150 Hebraic volumes bearing the stamps of antisemitic Nazi organizations that are also likely to have been seized by the Nazis from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In recognition of the special provenance of these books, the Library of Congress has created a virtual library aggregating both collections in its online catalog under the "Holocaust-Era Judaic Heritage Library." The full bibliographic record for each work includes a provenance note indicating the specific acquisition source and accession date for each title.

The Geography and Map Reading Room holds several maps related to the Holocaust, including but not limited to maps of main camps and sites, city maps of the camp areas, memorial maps, maps of Jewish towns and cemeteries in Poland. Researchers should contact Geography and Map Reading Room Staff directly for additional assistance.

The Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room page provides a chronological list of their newspaper collections starting in 1940, which is a good starting point for finding out what is available to research. Please note that earlier lists are not available digitally, but are available in print book formats at the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room reference desk.

The Prints and Photographs Division are the custodians of several Holocaust and Nazi-Germany related materials. Among these include the Photo-Archiv Generalfeldmarshall Göring (Hermann Göring photograph albums). The Prints and Photographs collections include many posters from the era and various government and photojournalism collections from the War and post-war period. The division also holds various photo albums and presentation albums created for Adolf Hitler, as well as photos of the history of the Nazi party.

The Music Division has custodial responsibility for many relevant music, theater and dance related books and collections related to the Holocaust. The Performing Arts Reading Room serves titles on various related topics such as how different composers works were appropriated or banned by the Nazi party, music used by German military bands for ceremonies, music composed to memorialize the Holocaust, and additional special collections. Researchers should contact Performing Arts Reading Room staff directly for additional assistance.