Edward Serotta glided around the room of Holocaust survivors and their families like an impresario, checking that they had enough food and drink and company. He sat with some, patted others on the back, endured some kisses and made sure that this monthly meeting at Vienna’s Jewish community center went smoothly, even as Viennese police kept guard outside, just in case.
About 80 people came to this pre-Rosh Hashanah gathering last month of Café Centropa, an outgrowth of Mr. Serotta’s singular project and achievement: Centropa, the nonprofit he built to document vanished Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe.
With the help of dozens of researchers and his countless trips to the region, Mr. Serotta and Centropa created a digital archive of 1,230 interviews conducted in 20 European countries, totaling some 45,000 pages of testimony. The archive includes more than 25,000 photographs.
“And every one of them comes with a story,” Mr. Serotta said. “The Holocaust is mankind’s single greatest crime, and while there are witnesses to it, those stories should be told and recorded. But there is another chapter, one in which every one of these people had compelling lives before and after.”
It was in Vienna that he found money for Centropa, partly from the Culture Ministry and partly from Hannah M. Lessing, managing director of Austria’s Holocaust restitution agency.
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