About Us
The story of the Friends of Wiener Holocaust Library began with a clear vision: to enhance understanding of the Library's vital mission, particularly among those in the U.S.
We aim to achieve this by organizing engaging in-person events, such as the book launch of “Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin and the Miraculous Survival of My Family” by Lord Daniel Finkelstein OBE in New York City.
Online Collection
The Library’s collection includes hundreds of thousands of documents, letters, photographs, press cuttings, books, pamphlets, periodicals
and unpublished manuscripts and memoirs, posters, artworks, and eyewitness testimonies. A key project is to further digitize the collection and provide global access to the Library’s online resources.
U.S. Friends has and will continue to support this project through fundraising and facilitating connections to organizations including educational institutions interested in gaining such access to the collection.
Guiding Values
Our core values center around education and personal engagement. We're adapting the Library’s online educational resources, such as "The Holocaust Explained," for use in U.S. schools. We also focus on personal outreach, recruiting new members for the Friends Committee to assist with event planning and encourage visits to the Library in London.
Who We Are
Peter Kingstone, President
Peter Kingstone is Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University, where he returned to the faculty in 2025 after serving for six years as Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. His career has taken him from Vermont and Connecticut to London and back to the United States, combining scholarship, teaching, and academic leadership.
Before joining Montclair State, Peter was Professor of Politics and Development at King’s College London. There he co-founded the International Development Institute—later the Department of International Development—and served as its co-director and head. Earlier, he taught political science at the University of Connecticut, where he also directed the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and at the University of Vermont.
Peter’s scholarship focuses on the political economy of Latin America, particularly Brazil, and on the complicated relationship among democracy, markets, institutions, and economic reform. He is the author of Crafting Coalitions for Reform and The Political Economy of Latin America, as well as the editor or co-editor of several books, including The Handbook of Latin American Politics and three volumes examining the evolution of Brazilian democracy. His research and commentary have also appeared in numerous academic journals and public-affairs publications.
Over the course of his career, Peter has been especially interested in how institutions respond to political and social change—and in the role that scholarship, education, and public engagement can play in sustaining democratic life. That interest informs his work with the US Friends of the Wiener Holocaust Library, where he serves as a trustee and president.
Peter received his B.A. with high honors from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Linda Karshan,
Vice-President
Linda Karshan is an artist whose life's work has been to place things in public hands and to keep them there, returning to the public what art has given her. She serves on the Leadership Council of Fortify Rights, which turns documentation of atrocity crimes into accountability, and she is a trustee of U.S. Friends of the Wiener Holocaust Library, supporting the oldest archive of its kind.
Since 1994, her drawings have been made by counting, breathing and turning the page with her whole body — guided by what she calls her “inner choreography” — an art of proportion and measure that has led her, unsurprisingly, to Rome, to Pisa, to Venice, and to L'Aquila. Held by the British Museum, Tate, the Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her drawings are an argument that human measure is something we recognize and hold in common.
In 2021, she gave The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Karshan Gift — 25 modern and post-war drawings by Cézanne, Kandinsky, Giacometti, de Kooning, Guston, Beuys and Twombly — in memory of her late husband, on a single point of principle: that the works remain in the public eye while being studied for generations to come: “Art comes alive when it is studied, and we want the work to be fully alive, for future generations, in the unique way that the dual nature of The Courtauld - gallery and teaching institution - makes possible.”
She is a co-custodian of the Roger E. Joseph Prize, established by her family in memory of her father — a lawyer left paralyzed by polio in 1951 who returned to his practice and to humanitarian work — and awarded with Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, for lasting contributions to human rights.
Karshan holds an MA in Humanistic Psychology from the Antioch Centre for British Studies, attended Skidmore College in NY, La Sorbonne in Paris, and The Slade School of Fine Art in London.
Oliver Schoening,
Treasurer/Secretary
Oliver Schoening is a business executive, entrepreneur, and Holocaust remembrance advocate, whose career has focused on partnerships across technology, media, and advertising. He currently leads entertainment partnerships within Apple’s advertising division, working with companies including Paramount+, NBCUniversal, and Netflix. With Apple since 2010, he helped build two advertising businesses from the ground up, establishing key partnerships with global companies such as Google and Expedia Group.
Previously, he co-founded Image Premiums, a promotional and event marketing company, and worked in television advertising sales at Viacom.
Alongside his business career, Oliver has been active in Holocaust remembrance and education. His work with The Heart of Auschwitz, a story of love and resilience originating inside Auschwitz, brought the story to audiences in the United States, Canada, and Germany. This work connected him with leading figures in Holocaust remembrance, including General Counsel Emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, Menachem Z. Rosensaft, whom he later accompanied to Bergen-Belsen—a journey that ultimately led him to the Wiener Holocaust Library.
German-born, Oliver brings a particular perspective to recognizing the warning signs of antisemitism and democratic decay, and the importance of institutions that preserve the evidence needed to recognize them. He serves as Treasurer of the US Friends of the Wiener Holocaust Library.
Oliver studied Music and English at Universität Osnabrück, receiving the German Staatsexamen for Education, and later studied Business Communication and Business Management at Harvard University.