Archival Memory Systems: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Latin America

Abstract

In the six decades following the end of World War II, only twenty percent
of Holocaust-era records had been analyzed, according to the late distinguished
scholar Raul Hilberg.1 Considering the proliferation of books, journal articles, and academic programs in Holocaust studies, this figure seems shockingly low, but when we consider the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s archi- val holdings from Latin America and Spain, we are reminded of the unclaimed histories these archives hold, for few scholars have pursued studying these in earnest. Diplomatic correspondence, records of concentration camps, Jewish communities, businesses and institutions, newspaper articles, texts from private collections of individuals, and more from Latin America and Spain, speak to the tremendous amount of material that is forgotten, and the history that is forgottenwith them.