The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia Of Camps And Ghettos 1933 1945 Volume I

This volume offers a comprehensive account of how the Nazis conducted the Holocaust throughout the scattered towns and villages of Poland and the Soviet Union. It covers more than 1,150 sites, including both open and closed ghettos. Regional essays outline the patterns of ghettoization in 19 German administrative regions. Each entry discusses key events in the history of the ghetto; living and working conditions; activities of the Jewish Councils; Jewish responses to persecution; demographic changes; and details of the ghetto's liquidation. Personal testimonies help convey the character of each ghetto, while source citations provide a guide to additional information. Documentation of hundreds of smaller sites—previously unknown or overlooked in the historiography of the Holocaust—make this an indispensable reference work on the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

Created by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the monumental 7-volume encyclopaedia that the present work inaugurates will make available - in one place for the first time - detailed information about the universe of camps, sub-camps, and ghettos established and operated by the Nazis - altogether some 20,000 sites, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. This volume covers three groups of camps: the early camps established in the first year of Hitler's rule, the major concentration camps with their constellations of sub-camps that operated under the control of the SS-Business Administration Main Office, and youth camps. Overview essays precede entries on individual camps and sub-camps. Each entry provides basic information about the purpose of the site; the prisoners, guards, working and living conditions; and key events in its history. Material drawn from personal testimonies helps convey the character of each site, while source citations for each entry provide a path to additional information.

“Stands without doubt as the definitive reference guide on this topic in the world today.” —Holocaust and Genocide Studies This volume of the extraordinary encyclopedia from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers a comprehensive account of how the Nazis conducted the Holocaust throughout the scattered towns and villages of Poland and the Soviet Union. It covers more than 1,150 sites, including both open and closed ghettos. Regional essays outline the patterns of ghettoization in nineteen German administrative regions. Each entry discusses key events in the history of the ghetto; living and working conditions; activities of the Jewish Councils; Jewish responses to persecution; demographic changes; and details of the ghetto’s liquidation. Personal testimonies help convey the character of each ghetto, while source citations provide a guide to additional information. Documentation of hundreds of smaller sites—previously unknown or overlooked in the historiography of the Holocaust—make this an indispensable reference work on the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. “A very detailed analysis and history of the events that took place in the towns, villages, and cities of German-occupied Eastern Europe . . . .A rich source of information.” —Library Journal “Focuses specifically on the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe . . . stands without doubt as the definitive reference guide on this topic in the world today. This is not hyperbole, but simply a recognition of the meticulous collaborative research that went into assembling such a massive collection of information.” —Holocaust and Genocide Studies “No other work provides the same level of detail and supporting material.” —Choice

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: “This valuable resource covers an aspect of the Holocaust rarely addressed and never in such detail.” —Library Journal This is the first volume in a monumental seven-volume encyclopedia, reflecting years of work by the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which will describe the universe of camps and ghettos—many thousands more than previously known—that the Nazis and their allies operated, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. For the first time, a single reference work will provide detailed information on each individual site. This first volume covers three groups of camps: the early camps that the Nazis established in the first year of Hitler’s rule, the major SS concentration camps with their constellations of subcamps, and the special camps for Polish and German children and adolescents. Overview essays provide context for each category, while each camp entry provides basic information about the site’s purpose; prisoners; guards; working and living conditions; and key events in the camp’s history. Material from personal testimonies helps convey the character of the site, while source citations provide a path to additional information.

Accounts of significant sites in Hungary, Vichy France, Italy, and other nations, part of the multi-volume reference praised as a “staggering achievement” (Jewish Daily Forward). This third volume in the monumental seven-volume encyclopedia, prepared by the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, offers a comprehensive account of camps and ghettos in, or run by, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Vichy France (including North Africa). Each entry discusses key events in the history of the ghetto; living and working conditions; activities of the Jewish Councils; Jewish responses to persecution; demographic changes; and details of the ghetto’s liquidation. Personal testimonies help convey the character of each ghetto, while source citations provide a guide to additional information. Documentation of hundreds of smaller sites—previously unknown or overlooked in the historiography of the Holocaust—make this an indispensable reference work on the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV aims to provide as much basic information as possible about individual camps and other detention facilities. Why were they established? Who ran them? What kinds of prisoners did they hold? What kinds of work did the prisoners do, and for whom? What were the conditions like? The entries detail the sources from which the authors drew their material, so future scholars can expand upon the work. Finally, and perhaps most important, this is a work of memorialization: it preserves the histories of places where people suffered and died. Volume IV examines an under-researched segment of the larger Nazi incarceration system: camps and other detention facilities under the direct control of the German military, the Wehrmacht. These include prisoner of war (POW) camps (including camps for enlisted men, camps for officers, camps for naval personnel and airmen, and transit camps), civilian internment and labor camps, work camps for Tunisian Jews, brothels in which women were forced to have sex with soldiers, and prisons and penal camps for Wehrmacht personnel. Most of these sites have not been described in detail in the existing historical literature, and a substantial number of them have never been documented at all. The volume also includes an introduction to the German prisoner of war camp system and its evolution, introductions to each of the various types of camps operated by the Wehrmacht, and entries devoted to each individual camp, representing the most comprehensive documentation to date of the Wehrmacht camp system. Within the entries, the volume draws upon German military documents, eyewitness and survivor testimony, and postwar investigations to describe the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian prisoners held captive by the Wehrmacht. Of particular note is the detailed documentation of the Wehrmacht's crimes against Soviet prisoners of war, which have largely been neglected in the English-language literature up to this point, despite the fact that more than three million Soviet prisoners died in German captivity. The volume also provides substantial coverage of the diverse range of conditions encountered by other Allied prisoners of war, illustrating both the substantial privations faced by all prisoners of war and the stark contrast between the Germans' treatment of Soviet prisoners and those of other nationalities. The volume also details the significant involvement of the Wehrmacht in crimes against the civilian populations of occupied Europe and North Africa. As a result, this volume not only brings to light many detention sites whose existence has been little known, but also advances the decades-old process of dismantling the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht," according to which the German military had nothing to do with the Holocaust and the Nazi regime's other crimes.

Created by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the monumental 7-volume encyclopaedia that the present work inaugurates will make available - in one place for the first time - detailed information about the universe of camps, sub-camps, and ghettos established and operated by the Nazis - altogether some 20,000 sites, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. This volume covers three groups of camps: the early camps established in the first year of Hitler's rule, the major concentration camps with their constellations of sub-camps that operated under the control of the SS-Business Administration Main Office, and youth camps. Overview essays precede entries on individual camps and sub-camps. Each entry provides basic information about the purpose of the site; the prisoners, guards, working and living conditions; and key events in its history. Material drawn from personal testimonies helps convey the character of each site, while source citations for each entry provide a path to additional information.