The Weidner Collection
“Just the fact that the papers of the leader of a transnational Resistance network that included 330 members operating in four countries exist makes the Weidner papers a rare collection. But there are quirks of Dutch-Paris that make the collection uniquely valuable.”
— Maciej Siekierski, Senior Curator of the European Collections at the Hoover Institution
In 1994, John and Naomi Weidner gifted to the Weidner Foundation a large collection of correspondence, historical documents, photographs, film reels, and artifacts that contain Weidner’s life story and the story of the Dutch-Paris Escape Line. The vast majority of these materials, which fill more than 100 manuscript boxes, were gathered and preserved for history by Weidner both during and after World War II. Many vital documents related to Dutch-Paris were written by John Weidner himself. The Collection is the most extensive source of information about John Weidner’s life and about the Dutch-Paris Escape Line that he founded and led. It is an essential trove of information for scholars conducting research on the resistance organization.
Between 2013 and 2023, the Collection was housed with the European Collections of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. By the terms of its agreement with Stanford, the Weidner Foundation retained the intellectual property rights, permissions, and copyrights to the Collection.
In February 2023, the Weidner Foundation completed the high-resolution digital scanning of the core of the Weidner Collection in partnership with a leading provider of archival digitizing services (The Crowley Company).
In December 2023, the Foundation resumed full ownership and care of the Collection. The physical Collection is currently protected in a climate-controlled storage facility in Riverside, California, and is not open to the general public.
Researchers who desire to explore the Weidner Collection for scholarly or family purposes should contact the Foundation and arrange to visit us to view the digital files.