Centropa was founded in Vienna and Budapest in 2000 with the goal of preserving Jewish memory in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltics, and the former Soviet Union, then disseminating our findings to the widest possible audience.
We were not founded to be a Holocaust interview project. Our goal was to seek out over a thousand elderly Jews still living between the Baltic and the Aegean so we could ask them to tell us stories about the entire 20th century, just as they lived it.
We never used video in those interviews. Instead, we digitized over 25,000 privately-held family photographs and personal documents all while we recorded their stories—45,000 pages of them.
The Centropa interviews were conducted between 2000 and 2009.
In 2023 the entire Centropa archive was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. For more on the acquisition, please click here: https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/museum-acquires-the-centropa-collection-a-unique-project-that-features-rare
Starting in 2005, we began creating thematic websites, multimedia films, traveling exhibitions, educational programs, and illustrated books, all based on our archive. In more recent years, we have been producing documentary films, walking tour apps, and podcasts.
Our main office and creative hub is in Vienna. Our educational teams work in Centropa offices in Budapest, Hamburg and Washington DC.
Each of our offices is a separate legal entity: Centropa (or The Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation) is registered as a 501c3 in the United States. We are registered as an "alapítvány" in Hungary and as a "Verein" in both Austria and Germany.
You can view our legal documents, tax filings and recent annual reports for all Centropa organisations here:
Between 2000 and 2009, Centropa interviewed 1,230 elderly Jews still living in the 15 countries between the Baltic and the Aegean.
When Centropa’s website first went live in 2002, the first people to write to us were teachers who asked what sort of educational programs we were offering.
Our social club for the Holocaust survivors we interviewed.
In 2020, we started sending books to our seniors from independent, Jewish-owned bookshops in Prague, Vienna and Budapest.
Since Centopa’s interviewing teams spent a decade collecting pictures and stories, it was only logical to create thematic exhibitions based on these stories.
Our first book was published in partnership with the Romanian city of Sibiu in 2007 in honor of the city named the European Capital of Culture.
See a list of programs and projects Centropa is involved with.
Centropa teams area working out of Vienna, Hamburg, Budapest, and the US.
As a non-profit organisation, we rely on our donors and supporters.
Centropa works with local partner organisations worldwide.
