Theme portal Compensation: Three-day workshop in Yad Vashem

From 8 – 10 November 2022, representatives of the team for the development of the topic portal "Compensation for National Socialist Injustice" were guests at the Yad Vashem Memorial and Educational Site in Jerusalem. During a three-day workshop, the eleven-member delegation from the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Archives, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg and FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure discussed with Israeli colleagues about approaches and challenges in the areas of development, data preparation and presentation, indexing and historical educational work.

In addition to a guided tour of the impressive exhibition and the "Hall of Names" memorial site, the team received an exclusive insight "Behind the Scenes" into the memorial archive with photo and digitisation workshop.

The workshop also opened the opportunity to present the topic portal Reparation in its current expansion stage and the underlying infrastructure of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) on site and to initiate the discourse about the interests and access options of future users of the topic portal - also with a view to international cooperation.

The delegation and the hosting team consisted of both archival and technical experts, which was reflected in a wide range of content input, which provided mutual insights into objectives and problems. The lively exchange showed that archives and other memory institutions often face the same challenges in the age of digitization. The discussion of possible solutions, e.g. in the area of data accessibility, thematic keywording or the use of artificial intelligence, could start there. The exchange of perspectives and experiences in partnership was extremely fruitful and there was agreement to continue and deepen it in the future.