Thousands of people are being promised new rights to information, a potentially momentous step in a country where unmarried mothers were pressured for decades to give up their babies.
Tag: Archives and Records
The War in Ukraine Is the True Culture War
With Russia trying to erase Ukraine’s national identity, the fight to preserve, and build upon, Ukraine’s artistic heritage has taken on new urgency.
Vatican Releases Letters From Jews Pleading for Help During the Holocaust
Pope Francis has ordered files containing requests for assistance from people throughout Europe, many of them converts to Roman Catholicism, to be made available online.
Deep in Vatican Archives, Scholar Discovers ‘Flabbergasting’ Secrets
David Kertzer has spent decades excavating the Vatican’s hidden history, with his work winning a Pulitzer and capturing Hollywood’s attention. A new book examines Pope Pius XII’s role in the Holocaust.
Stolen Darwin Notebooks, Missing for Decades, Are Returned
The two notebooks were anonymously returned to the Cambridge University Library 22 years after they went missing. A note addressed to the librarian read: “Happy Easter.”
British Rainfall Records Extended Back to 1836 Thanks to Covid Lockdowns
As Britain went into its first Covid lockdown, a scientist asked for help transcribing rainfall records spanning three centuries. Thousands of people online answered the call.
An Undiscovered Coronavirus? The Mystery of the ‘Russian Flu’
Scientists are grasping for any example that could help anticipate the future of Covid, even a mysterious respiratory pandemic that spread in the late 19th century.
YIVO Institute Makes Archives of Yiddish Life Available Online
After a lengthy effort, artifacts from collections in Lithuania and New York that document Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe before World War II will be accessible to scholars and others.
A Pakistan Photographer Rushes to Save the Past
Shahid Zaidi is working to preserve the photos his father shot of Pakistan’s first leaders and of its people in the era of the country’s founding.
Piecing Together the History of Stasi Spying
Researchers undertake the massive task of recreating millions of torn-up records that the East German secret police hoped to destroy.