Museum
Most people are unaware of the full extent of the Nazi camp and ghetto system. Behind the well-known names, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and Warsaw, there was a vast universe of facilities, roughly twenty thousand of them, that formed the heart of the Nazi racist, totalitarian regime. The encyclopedia’s purpose is to offer both scholars and a broader audience with a fundamental reference work that provides basic information on the history of the camps and ghettos, and that facilitates further research in the field.
Each of the seven volumes will address a group of sites according to type or subordination so each volume stands on its own. In this way, the reader can gain some appreciation, not just for the conditions at a particular site, but also for the way in which the system functioned as a whole. Photographs, charts, and maps will supplement the text.
Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA).
This volume contains entries on 110 early camps, 23 main SS concentration camps (including such sites as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau), 898 subcamps, 39 SS construction brigade camps, and 3 so-called youth protection camps. Introductory essays provide broader context, while citations and source narratives offer the basis for additional research. The volume is over 1700 pages in length, with 192 photographs and 23 maps.
The volume has received the 2009 National Jewish Book Award, the 2010 Judaica Reference Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries, Library Journal’s Best of Reference 2009, and was designated a Choice magazine 2010 Outstanding Academic Title.
Volume II: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe
Geoffrey P. Megargee, General Editor
Martin Dean, Volume Editor
Introduction by Christopher R. Browning
“This magnificent collective effort, uniting the research and expertise of leading scholars from around the world, provides a fundamental new reference for the history of the Holocaust. Anyone who wishes to understand the variety of Jewish experience in the ghettos and the scale of the destruction of a whole European world must consult this encyclopedia.” --Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands
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.
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Available January 2012
2096 pp., 192 b&w illus., 20 maps
cloth 978-0-253-35599-7 $295.00
PREPUBLICATION PRICE $236.00
THROUGH NOVEMBER 1, 2011
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