Even while they were in exile, émigrés collected testimonies, documented persecution and tried to make their collections public. Émigrés were among those who made contributions to a “Library of Emigration Literature” at the end of the 1940s; this library later gave rise to the German Exile Archive 1933–1945. However, the books, letters, personal documents and objects do not merely tell a story of exile. They often also bear traces of their fate.