ABSTRACT
In July 1999, Potsdam University hosted an international conference, supported by the European Council of Jewish Communities, the Jewish Partnership for Europe, the European Commission (Direction Générale X), the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the Moses Mendelssohn Centre. ‘Preserving Jewish Archives as part of the European Cultural Heritage’ was not just a conference title, but the starting point of an ambitious programme: to identify Jewish archives (within Jewish communities and related organizations) as well as public archives (state, regional, municipal) containing material relating to Jewish history and culture; to encourage and support exchange and cooperation between those archives; ‘to present the state of the art in the field of Jewish archives in Europe, to set the foundations for a future directory of Jewish archives, and to create a debate between the main actors of the field, including our American and Israeli colleagues’.1
