The „Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania was established by Government Decision no. 902 of August 4, 2005.

The Institute’s object of activity is the identification, collection, archiving, research, and publication of documents related to the Holocaust, in solving some scientific problems, as well as developing and implementing educational programs regarding this historical phenomenon. To achieve the object of activity, the Institute has the following main attributions:

a) carries out research, educational and cultural projects in Romania and abroad to deepen the knowledge of the Holocaust phenomenon;
b) acquires or receives as donations any testimony, publication or document regarding the Holocaust, or concerning it;
c) identifies, brings to the country, and preserves the documents regarding the Holocaust from Romania, in original or in copy, on any medium, spread in different countries of the world;
d) creates an archive that includes publications, books, collections of magazines, newspapers, manifestos, and other documents related to the Holocaust in Romania, also creating work tools in the field;
e) launches oral history projects to save the historical memory of the Holocaust;
f) organizes scientific events on the topic of the Holocaust and contributes to the representation of national research in this field in international scientific meetings;

g) finances the editing, printing, and publication of memoirs, books, studies, articles, correspondence, photographic and video memory, document collections, and photo albums related to the Holocaust;
h) organizes and supports the implementation of scientific, social-cultural, and educational actions regarding the Holocaust on a project basis;
i) constitutes a point of reference and communication with Holocaust survivors;
j) contribute through expertise to the preservation of the spiritual heritage of the communities in Romania affected during the Holocaust;
k) initiates, through the Government’s General Secretariat, and approves draft normative acts in its field of activity.
l) initiates cultural, scientific, educational, and legal actions to protect the memory of the Holocaust victims;
m) coordinates the activities to create a Museum of the History of the Jews in Romania.

The “Elie Wiesel” Institute also supported the organization of the Holocaust Victims Memorial in Romania, fulfilling one of the recommendations mentioned in the Report released by the “Elie Wiesel” International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in 2004.

The inauguration of the INSHR-EW took place on October 10, 2005, on the occasion of the second commemoration of the National Victims’ Day of the Holocaust in Romania.

October 2020 – 15 years of activity.

The National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania “Elie Wiesel” offers access to the general public interested in the subject, as well as to historians or researchers in the field, a documentary archive with over 1.5 million microfilmed pages from the public archives of the state institutions involved in the preparation and carrying out of the destruction Jews from Romania.

For those interested, we can offer the volumes the Institute has edited over time and specific books of documents from the German and Romanian army archives.

We run training programs for pre-university teachers on topics about the Holocaust, xenophobia, discrimination, and nationalism. We also support oral history projects to preserve the memory of those who suffered or witnessed the events.

We carried out research projects on the Pogrom in Bucharest (January 1941), the one in Iasi (June 1941), or the system of compulsory labor to which the Jewish population was subject during that period. Another significant project of the Institute was the archaeological research program through which, in November 2010, a mass grave 15 km from the city of Iasi was found and identified. Thus, several dozen victims found their graves seven decades after the assassination.