Libraries abroad: Library anti-fascist moves to the University of London

A library that helped alert the world to the evils of Nazism and bring war criminals to justice has found a new home at the heart of the University of London.

In 1933, Alfred Wiener set up the Jewish Central Information Office in Amsterdam to publicise what was happening in Nazi Germany. When he and his collection moved to London in 1939, its resources were made available to British intelligence. What became the Wiener Library now contains 60,000 books and 1.5 million pages of archival material.

Funding from the Pears Foundation will enable it to relocate to a new Bloomsbury site in 2011, to the University of London. The new Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism will be also established here.