''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945'' is a seven-part encyclopedia series that explores the history of the
concentration camps
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
,
ghettos
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
,
forced-labor camps
''Arbeitslager'' () is a German language word which means labor camp. Under Nazism, the German government (and its private-sector, Axis, and collaborator partners) used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially durin ...
, and other sites of detention, persecution, or state-sponsored murder run by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
and other
Axis powers
The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
in Europe and Africa. The series is produced by the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
(USHMM) and published by
Indiana University Press. Research began in 2000; the first volume was published in 2009; and the final volume is slated for publication in 2025. Along with entries on individual sites, the encyclopedias also contain scholarly overviews for historical context.
The project attracted media attention when its editors announced in 2013 that the series would cover more than 42,500 sites, eight times more than expected. The first two volumes in the series, covering the Nazi concentration camps and Nazi ghettos, received a positive response from both scholars and survivors. Multiple scholars have described the encyclopedias as the most comprehensive reference on their given subjects.
Publication history
The work on the series began in 2000 by the researchers at the USHMM's
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. Its general editor and project director is the American historian
Geoffrey P. Megargee. The project has received financial support from the
Helen Bader Foundation
Bader Philanthropies Inc. is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin based foundation that consists of funds from the Helen Daniels Bader Fund and the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund. It pledges to give away $14 million annually. The organization centers on the healt ...
and the
Claims Conference
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference, represents the world's Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. According to Section 2(1)(3) of the Proper ...
. The entries are written by experts on each individual site; contributors include professional historians as well as a wide variety of amateurs, including survivors and relatives of perpetrators. The co-editor of the second volume,
Martin Dean, had previously worked as an investigator of Nazi war criminals. The overall aim of the series is to become the standard reference work for the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
and other Nazi persecutions.
Originally, the editors planned to include about 5,000 sites of Nazi persecution, murder, and imprisonment. However, their estimate doubled by the next year. At an academic conference in 2013, Megargee and Dean said that they had uncovered more than 42,500 sites which will be covered in the encyclopedia, including 30,000 forced-labor camps, 1,150 ghettos, 980 concentration camps and subcamps, 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps, and 800
German military brothels. However, the figure of 42,500 is a considerable underestimate, because the researchers require multiple witness testimonies and documentary evidence to publish an entry on a site. Sites also must have housed at least 20 people and existed for more than a month.
The figure of 42,500 was soon picked up as a news story in the German- and English-language media because "new, more, larger—and, of course, Nazis" are "all the elements of a sensational headline", according to Dutch historian
Robert Jan Van Pelt
Robert Jan van Pelt (born 15 August 1955) is a Dutch author, architectural historian, professor at the University of Waterloo and a Holocaust scholar. One of the world's leading experts on Auschwitz, he regularly speaks on Holocaust related topic ...
. Megargee remarked, "You could not turn a corner in Germany
uring the war.. without finding someone there against their will." Dean commented, "To document this on a map and see how the Holocaust affected every single community throughout Europe makes quite clear the scope of the Nazi regime's murder campaign."
The first volume in the series, ''Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA)'' was published in 2009, and the second volume, ''Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe'', was published in 2012. Volume 3, ''Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany'', was published in 2018. In 2017, the first two volumes of the series were released online for free download. The editors plan to complete the series of seven volumes in 2025, which will contain about 12,000 pages in thirteen separate books.
Content
The entries are organized by region, following German administrative districts, and then alphabetically. Following each entry is a bibliography and a guide to archival sources. Entries are illustrated by historical photographs when available.
Volume I
Volume I covers the early camps that the ''
Sturmabteilung'' (SA) and ''
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe duri ...
'' (SS) set up in the first year of the Nazi regime, and the camps later run by the
SS Economic Administration Main Office (WHVA) and their numerous sub-camps. For historical context, the American historian Joseph Robert White provided an overview of the early camps, while German historian
Karin Orth
Karin Orth (born 1963) is a German historian, known for her research into the Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentra ...
contributed a section on the history of the WHVA camps. She documents the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system, from 20,000 prisoners in August 1939 to more than 100,000 by the end of 1942, and 715,000 in January 1945, as many as half of whom died before liberation. Mass murder became an essential part of the camp system in late 1941, and forced labor and genocide intertwined. Despite Nazi orders aimed at improving the productivity of concentration camp labor, conditions remained deadly.
These essays are the only analysis presented in the volume; most of the content catalogues the camps, including locations, duration of operation, purpose, perpetrators and victims. The volume contains 1,100 entries written by 150 contributors. The volume covers both well-known camps such as
Auschwitz II-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
and lesser-known camps such as a labor camp at a Polish Catholic cemetery in
Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...
, where Jewish prisoners were forced to smash headstones and dig up graves in search of gold and other valuables.
Volume II
Volume II, which profiles 1,150 ghettos in German-occupied Eastern Europe, was published in 2012. It is introduced by an essay by
Christopher Browning, detailing the history and historiography of the ghetto system. Browning criticizes "the temptation to see Nazi ghettoization as a uniform, centralized and calculated preparatory step for the
Final Solution
The Final Solution (german: die Endlösung, ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (german: Endlösung der Judenfrage, ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to th ...
", arguing that local conditions played a major role in the establishment of ghettos and that the ghettoization began before the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews. The book does not include extensive survivor testimony, instead covering each ghetto from a variety of available sources and perspectives. Along with entries on the ghettos, the encyclopedia also contains extensive maps. Beyond the implementation of ghettoization, the entries also cover massacres, other atrocities,
Jewish resistance, and rescue attempts.
Volume III
Volume III covers camps, ghettos, and other detention centers run by other
Axis powers
The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
and allied and
cobelligerent
Co-belligerence is the waging of a war in cooperation against a common enemy with or without a formal treaty of military alliance. Generally, the term is used for cases where no alliance exists. Likewise, allies may not become co-belligerents in a ...
states, including the
Slovak State
Slovak may refer to:
* Something from, related to, or belonging to Slovakia (''Slovenská republika'')
* Slovaks, a Western Slavic ethnic group
* Slovak language, an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages
* Slovak, Arka ...
, the
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in p ...
, the
Italian Social Republic,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
,
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...
,
Kingdom of Bulgaria
The Tsardom of Bulgaria ( bg, Царство България, translit=Tsarstvo Balgariya), also referred to as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom ( bg, Трето Българско Царство, translit=Treto Balgarsko Tsarstvo, links=no), someti ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
,
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania ( ro, Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed in Romania from 13 March ( O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian ...
, and
Vichy France
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its te ...
. The encyclopedia also covers camps run by these allied countries in occupied territory, such as the Italian occupation zones of Greece, France, Albania, and Yugoslavia, and camps run by Vichy France and Italy in North and East Africa. Each country is introduced by an overview. The volume is noted for the diversity of perpetrators, victims, and the type of persecution.
Volume IV
The fourth volume, published in March 2022, covers thousands of camps operated by the
German armed forces
The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part con ...
including the
German military brothels. Many of these sites were little-known prior to the publication of the book, which the authors suggest will help dismantle the
myth of the clean Wehrmacht
The myth of the clean ''Wehrmacht'' is the negationist notion that the regular German armed forces (the '' Wehrmacht'') were not involved in the Holocaust or other war crimes during World War II. The myth, heavily promoted by German autho ...
.
[
]
Upcoming volumes
Future volumes will cover sites where non-Jews were persecuted, sites where Jews were persecuted, and sites where the Nazis exploited the forced labor of unwilling prisoners. This last category consists of an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 locations.
Reception
Overall
A review by British historian Simone Gigliotti in the '' German Studies Review'' found that the encyclopedia is "a highly significant and overdue synthesis of existing documentary studies and specialized knowledge", although she notes it is not the first effort at a comprehensive reference on a Holocaust topic: previous multivolume encyclopedias had been published by Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
and the ''Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...
''. Samuel Kassow
Samuel D. Kassow (born 1946) is an American historian of the history of Ashkenazi Jewry.
Early life
Kassow was born in a displaced persons' camp in Stuttgart, Germany. His mother survived because a classmate hid her and her sister in a dug-ou ...
praised the bibliographical information in the book, writing that the encyclopedia is "a terrific resource for researchers" that "will stimulate further study". Van Pelt wrote that the encyclopedia's strengths included bringing together information from sources that were otherwise scattered, which is reflected in the "extensive annotation" and bibliographical information.
Both Gigliotti and Van Pelt questioned the utility of a paper encyclopedia, writing that this format would be underutilized in the Internet age, especially when online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
provide generally accurate, freely accessible content. However, Van Pelt wrote that print was a better medium for difficult-to-understand topics like the Holocaust. He reported that some survivors and their descendants had paid full price ($295.00) for the first volume of the encyclopedia because it "stands as a bulwark between their own memory and the denials
Denial, in ordinary English usage, has at least three meanings: asserting that any particular statement or allegation is not true (which might be accurate or inaccurate); the refusal of a request; and asserting that a true statement is not true. ...
" and controversies surrounding Holocaust history, by containing basic facts about locations of persecution. Noah Lederman, a grandson of a survivor, wrote in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency op-ed that his grandfather's testimony about a little-known forced-labor camp had been included in the encyclopedia:
Volume I
According to Kassow, "one cannot ask for a better guide" to the Nazi concentration camps than this volume of the encyclopedia. He highlights the "wealth of detail" to be found in the book, including information on prisoners' daily lives, relations between prisoner categories, the death marches
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...
, and specifics about the companies involved in the Holocaust
This list includes corporations and their documented collaboration in the implementation of the Holocaust.
List
Gallery
File:Zyklon B labels.jpg , Zyklon B used at Dachau concentration camp. "Poison Gas! Cyanide preparation to be opened ...
. A story in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' noted that the encyclopedia also serves a practical purpose, in helping victims receive compensation for their imprisonment in previously unknown sites.
In an interview in ''Die Welt
''Die Welt'' ("The World") is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE.
''Die Welt'' is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors are the ''Frankfurter All ...
'', Wolfgang Benz
Wolfgang Benz (born 9 June 1941) is a German historian from Ellwangen. He was the director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism of the Technische Universität Berlin between 1990 and 2011.
Personal life
Benz studied history, political ...
, the editor of a nine-volume German-language scholarly encyclopedia of the WHVA camps, ''Der Ort des Terrors
''Der Ort des Terrors'' ("The Place of Terrors") is a nine-volume German-language encyclopedia series of the Nazi concentration camps and subcamps, published between 2005 and 2009. The first volume centers around the Nazi concentration camps an ...
'', criticized the USHMM encyclopedia project. He said that it was "arrogant" to label the project an encyclopedia. Benz also accused the USHMM editors of copying his work and claimed that the encyclopedia was not based on original research, unfounded allegations according to Van Pelt. His criticism was interpreted by Van Pelt and German historian Marc Buggeln
''Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps'' is a book by German historian Marc Buggeln which deals with the forced labor that prisoners had to perform in Nazi concentration camps. The book, which primarily deals with Neuengamme concentration ca ...
as being related to concern that the USHMM encyclopedia, which is more ambitious in scope, would overshadow Benz' work. According to Van Pelt, the two encyclopedias serve complementary goals.
Volume II
Van Pelt and German historian Klaus-Peter Friedrich compare Volume II to ''The Yad Yashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust'', which covers similar territory. The Yad Vashem book has less detail on what took place during the war, instead emphasizing Jewish life before the war and continuity between the prewar community and the wartime ghetto. It also covers fewer locations, due to restricting its definition of a ghetto to places where a Jewish community existed before the war. Unlike the USHMM encyclopedia, the Yad Vashem encyclopedia did not cite sources, because it was based mostly on survivor testimony and Yizkor books
Yizkor books are memorial books commemorating a Jewish community destroyed during the Holocaust. The books are published by former residents or ''landsmanshaft'' societies as remembrances of homes, people and ways of life lost during World War II. ...
. Van Pelt characterized the lack of continuity in the USHMM encyclopedia as its greatest omission.
American historian Waitman Wade Beorn Waitman Wade Beorn is a historian who studies the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. Previously, he served as the Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and ...
praised the volume for its detailed coverage of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, previously an under-studied topic. The "encyclopedia surpasses any other reference currently available" and the entries are "fantastically rich with information". He also commented that the encyclopedia charts the particulars of each victim's death or survival story, something that Beorn characterized as being more of an emphasis in recent scholarship. According to Beorn, the entries document not only "the complexity and variability" of ghettoization, but also the attention to detail of contributors and editors. Commenting on the large numbers of maps in the volume, he wrote that "the entries can be viewed as extensive collections of metadata for discrete geographical locations", providing the basis for thinking spatially about the Holocaust. Despite the high price of the encyclopedia, Beorn wrote, it was an essential purchase for academic libraries and scholars of the Holocaust.
Awards
*2009 National Jewish Book Award
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.[Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...]
category.
Volumes
*Volume I: ''Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA)'', 2009,
*Volume II: ''Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe'', 2012,
*Volume III: ''Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany'', 2018,
References
Scholarly reviews
Volume 1
*
*
Volume 2
*
*
*
News stories
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Primary sources
*
*
External links
Official project page
at the USHMM
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust his ...
web site
Free download, Volumes I, II, and III
via the USHMM
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust his ...
web site
Interview
with Geoffrey P. Megargee about the project, 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos
2009 non-fiction books
2012 non-fiction books
2018 non-fiction books
21st-century history books
History books about World War II
History books about the Holocaust
American non-fiction books
Indiana University Press books
Historiography of World War II
Encyclopedias of history
Jewish encyclopedias
English-language encyclopedias
Upcoming books