Ethics & access policies
A Holocaust archive carries weight that other archives do not. These policies set out how we describe difficult material, who is named and who is shielded, how to ask us to remove or correct a record, and what to expect when you encounter the collections.
Reparative description
Some descriptions in this archive carry the language of the records they came from — language used by perpetrators, by Cold War cataloguers, by communities under duress. We do not silently rewrite the past.
But we do edit. We add context. We surface community-preferred names alongside the names imposed in the source. Where descriptive language is gratuitously harmful, we replace it and we say what we changed and why. We follow the practice articulated by the Society of American Archivists and the work being done at Yale, Schlesinger, and other repositories rethinking colonial-era cataloguing.
If you find a description that should be revised — a slur in a finding aid, a misnamed survivor, a place stripped of its Yiddish or Hebrew form — please tell us. Reparative description is iterative; the archive is better for community correction than for our own assumptions.
Privacy & sensitivity classification
Every named person in the archive is classified along a privacy axis. The class governs what is shown publicly, what is suppressed from harvesters, and whether AI may extract or summarize their information. Tenants can override these classifications for their own jurisdiction.
- Public historical
- Historical figures whose lives are matters of public record — leaders, authors, public officials. Full description is shown.
- Survivor — living or unknown
- Survivors who are living, or whose status cannot be confirmed. We default to the most protective treatment: limited public display, no AI summarization, and donor agreements honored.
- Perpetrator — documented
- Individuals documented in war-crimes records, trial testimony, or court proceedings. Named for accountability, not commemoration.
- Witness or bystander
- People named in passing whose role does not warrant the full historical treatment. Identifying details are shown sparingly and revised on request from family.
These tiers are encoded in our metadata, not just our policies. They drive automated suppression in OAI-PMH harvests and public search facets — privacy is enforced by code, not by hope.
Takedown & correction requests
You — or someone in your family — may appear in this archive without your knowing. If a record names you, depicts you, or describes events involving you, you have standing to ask us to remove it, restrict it, or correct it. We treat these requests seriously and respond personally.
- 01
Tell us what to look at
Send the URL of the record (or a description of where you saw it), and tell us who you are in relation to the material — the person depicted, a direct descendant, a legal representative, the donor.
- 02
Tell us what you want
Removal, redaction (faces or names obscured), restriction (visible only to credentialed researchers), or correction (the description is wrong). We will tell you what is possible and what is not.
- 03
We acknowledge within five business days
A real archivist, not a form. We will explain what we can do, ask any clarifying questions, and give you a timeline. Sensitive requests are escalated to senior staff.
- 04
We log every change
Resolution is recorded as a PREMIS preservation event tied to the record. The custodial chain is preserved even when the public-facing record changes. We do not silently disappear material — we account for it.
A note on what you may encounter
These collections document atrocity. Photographs, testimony, and documents in this archive depict violence, dehumanization, and the death of children. None of it is sensationalized; all of it is real.
We do not place blanket warnings on collections, because the entire archive concerns this subject and a warning that covers everything covers nothing. We do flag specific records — graphic forensic photography, post-mortem images, identifying images of victims — so that researchers and educators can prepare students and themselves.
If you are a teacher building a unit, an exhibit curator selecting images, or a survivor or descendant approaching an unfamiliar record, you may write to us for guidance on what a particular collection contains. We will tell you honestly.