Published on: 3 Jul 2026 Archivist in the Spotlight: Preserving Northern Ireland’s Jewish History with Keira Dobbin Keira Dobbin, Library Assistant, Special Collections & Archives, Queen’s University Belfast When Keira Dobbin joined Queen’s University Belfast in 2017, she had no idea that a single journal would spark a lasting connection with Northern Ireland’s Jewish history. Now working in Special Collections & Archives, she has become closely involved in preserving and cataloging Jewish material held at Queen’s. In our sixth Archivist in the Spotlight, Keira reflects on her journey into the role, the collections she has worked with, and what continues to inspire her. An unexpected beginning I joined Queen’s in 2017 in a part-time role. I’d done my Master’s in Information and Library Studies, and I’d worked in public libraries and in Belfast Bible College, but I’d never worked in Special Collections before. I honestly had no idea what it would entail. One of the first things my boss gave me was this journal, the Belfast Jewish Record that had started around 1954 when the Belfast Jewish community was a lot bigger than it is now. The collection of the Record had been loaned by a gentleman in the local Jewish community, and we were planning to digitise it. I was just told to have a look through it and analyse it a bit as no one had really done anything with it before. Front page of a copy of the Belfast Jewish Record from 1955 featuring an editorial on the publication’s future and Queen’s University – Belfast Jewish Record, February 1955. Reproduced by kind permission of the Belfast Jewish Record Editorial Board. I completely fell in love with it. It was just fantastic. There was such a variety in it — everything from recipes for Jewish festivals to political discussions, religious debates and social news. It was just such a wide range. And I think what struck me was that it really showed the community speaking in its own voice. It wasn’t something written about them. It was written by and for the local Jewish community. And that was really it, that was my introduction to the Jewish collections. Building the collections and relationships A lot of what we have in the Jewish collections at Queens is connected to Ireland, particularly Belfast and Dublin, and mostly from the late 19th century onwards. The collections really developed through relationships. Before I started, there was work done by Dr Pamela Aveyard, who was researching Jewish identity in Belfast for her PhD around 2010. Through her, links were established with the local Jewish congregation. They allowed her to consult their archives, which at the time were held in a bank in Belfast so not that easily accessible. Pamela and the Library continued to build the relationship though and soon the community very generously deposited their archives with us instead. That relationship has been really important. Over time, we’ve been able to build on it, and people still come to us and say, ‘We have some material we’d like to donate.’ Another fantastic deposit was from Dr. David Warm. He directed ‘The Northern Ireland Jewish Oral and Documentary History Project’ and had done over 100 interviews in the 1990s and early 2000s with people who were either living or had at some stage in their life lived in Northern Ireland who were Jewish. Most of them had come over during the Kindertransport and Dr. Warm deposited these with us as CDs and cassettes. A tape and a CD from the David Warm collection – MS 62 David Warm Oral History Archive, Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast These joined other collections such as Louis Hyman’s, collected for his 1972 book, The Jews of Ireland: From Earliest Times to the Year 1910 and the Rosenfield collection, which is about two sisters, Judith and Rachel who became journalists, art critics and playwrights in the mid-20th century. Added to that are our Hibernica collections, our general Irish related books, that include some of the Jewish history too. We really wanted to open the story of the community up to more people so digitisation was the next step. Digitisation and opening up access Digitisation has been a huge part of my work. For example, the Belfast Jewish Record and the Jewish Gazette are both now available online, fully searchable, which is brilliant because people can look up family names or events or just explore. At the same time, some material has to be handled more carefully. The oral histories collected by Dr David Warm are incredibly powerful but they include very personal, sometimes traumatic experiences. So those are available, but in a more controlled way, so people come in and consult them on site. It’s always about balancing access with sensitivity. Screenshot of the digital catalogue for MS 55 Shachter Papers, Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast One of the biggest projects I’ve worked on is the Rabbi Jacob Shachter collection. He was probably the longest-serving rabbi in Belfast and was very active. He was quite a character and did a lot for the local Jewish community and the wider community too. He published academic papers, would have been on the radio and wrote letters to local newspapers – he was a prolific letter writer. The papers themselves are in the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem and through Dr. Aveyard’s work, they got funding to have them digitized. We now have digital copies of his papers totaling over 16,000 documents. We have a legal agreement with the Archive that we can make them available for researchers, but they had to be organized and catalogued properly. Dr. Aveyard continued to work on it. There are letters in English, Hebrew, German, a few in French and possibly Yiddish – it all goes to show what an important character Shachter was. Some were in Sütterlin script, a type of German script that was used in the early 20th century. It’s quite distinctive, outlawed by the Nazis and not easily read by Germans or translators these days. We managed to find Carolin Sommer, a translator who did read it and those are some of the translations we have online now. We also had advice from EHRI-UK (The UK National Holocaust Research Infrastructure) who helped with things like tagging, identifying camps and standardisation of spelling. It was a huge job. We were able to upload the original documents alongside English translations, so anyone can read the German letter, then just click and see the translation underneath. That makes a huge difference in terms of accessibility. I worked particularly on the wartime letters. These were mostly people writing asking if he could help them get out primarily from Vienna. They are really quite heartbreaking. You can hear the desperation in them, because people knew what was coming. He couldn’t get everybody out, of course, but he did his best to get sponsors in the local Jewish community and otherwise. I think he did a fantastic job at what must have been a really difficult and emotional time. Because he was a Belfast rabbi and he served for so long, we just wanted to bring the collection back to the city in a sense. It’s obviously not the originals, but it is part of our library now. Learning as you go I was born in Belfast but I don’t come from a Jewish background, and I would say I was quite ignorant of the Jewish community here before I started. I had no idea there was this really rich history in Ireland. I think because so much of Irish history is dominated by the Troubles and those big narratives, other communities can get overshadowed. So it was really exciting to discover that there was this whole other history, this really vibrant community that had been here for over a century. Minute Book 1915 – 1926, MS 61/1/3, Belfast Hebrew Congregation Archive, Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast It definitely felt like a steep learning curve at the start. You come across words, references, customs and you think, ‘I have no idea what that means’ but that’s part of what makes it interesting. Language has definitely been one of the challenges with the collections. You’ve got German, Hebrew, sometimes Yiddish and older scripts that aren’t easily readable now. Even with English material, there are lots of words that are specific to the Jewish community. When I first worked on the Belfast Jewish Record, we actually started putting together a glossary because we kept coming across terms we didn’t understand. You realise very quickly that what’s completely normal for one community can feel totally unfamiliar to someone else — so those kinds of resources really help. Getting to know people through the archives There have been so many moments where something has really stayed with me, but I think one of the most unexpected things is how you start to feel connected to people. The Rosenfeld sisters are a good example. We have their scrapbooks, a lot of their articles, some of their plays and the things that they wrote. It’s quite an under researched collection. Being women journalists and writers was quite unusual at that time but their names just kept coming up again and again. And then I came across an obituary for one of them, and it genuinely felt sad, like I’d lost someone I knew. You get attached as you see these lives unfold through the records. Article by Rachel Rosenfield, MS 43/1/10, Rosenfield Collection, Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast Something I feel strongly about is that I don’t want Jewish history here to be defined only by tragedy. Obviously, Holocaust education is hugely important, and it’s a part of the community’s history we’re building up as well. But there’s also such a different story, of the contributions Jewish people made to society, business and culture in Ireland. It’s about showing that broader picture. Looking ahead We’re really fortunate that we have a good relationship with the local Jewish community, and that people trust us with their archives. And there’s plenty more we’d like to translate and digitize. I think interest in this area is growing, and it feels like we’re only at the beginning. There’s still so much to uncover and share. For me, it all started with that one journal and it’s only grown from there. If you’d like to know more about or view the Shachter or David Warm collections, please email: specialcollections@qub.ac.uk Here’s a link to our Jewish Collections LibGuide: https://libguides.qub.ac.uk/c.php?g=282353&p=4925123 And a related blog: https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/specialcollections/jewish-heritage-in-northern-ireland/ Queen’s University Belfast, Special Collections & Archives Communal Records | Jewish Life | Local History | ReligionPartially online Special Collections & Archives at the McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast, has been developing collections on Jewish history in Ireland, with a […]