Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945
National Jewish Book Award | |
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Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 is a seven-part encyclopedia series that explores the history of the
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
Originally, the editors planned to include about 5,000 sites of Nazi persecution, murder, and imprisonment. However, their estimate doubled by the next year.[6][7] 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,[8] 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.[9] 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.[4] Sites also must have housed at least 20 people and existed for more than a month.[10]
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
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,[5] and the second volume, Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, was published in 2012.[9] Volume 3, Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, was published in 2018.[11] In 2017, the first two volumes of the series were released online for free download.[1] The editors plan to complete the series of seven volumes in 2025, which will contain about 12,000 pages in thirteen separate books.[4][12]
Content
The entries are organized by region, following German administrative districts, and then alphabetically.[13][14] Following each entry is a bibliography and a guide to archival sources.[15] Entries are illustrated by historical photographs when available.[3]
Volume I
Volume I covers the early camps that the
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.
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
Volume III
Volume III covers camps, ghettos, and other detention centers run by other
Volume IV
The fourth volume, published in March 2022, covers thousands of camps operated by the German armed forces 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.[25][26]
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.[11][15][25]
Reception
Overall
A review by British historian
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 provide generally accurate, freely accessible content.[12][19] 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" and controversies surrounding Holocaust history, by containing basic facts about locations of persecution.[28] 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:
To read these words reminded me that Poppy mattered, and that Karczew mattered. Every single one of these encyclopedia entries — chronicling the tens of thousands of places like Karczew — all matter. They will paint a picture of what was lost — and encourage remembering by all of us.[6]
Volume I
According to Kassow, "one cannot ask for a better guide" to the Nazi concentration camps than this volume of the encyclopedia.
In an interview in
Volume II
Van Pelt and German historian Klaus-Peter Friedrich[9] compare Volume II to The Yad Yashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust,[32] 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. Van Pelt characterized the lack of continuity in the USHMM encyclopedia as its greatest omission.[33]
American historian Waitman Wade Beorn 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.[34]
Awards
- 2009
Volumes
- Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), 2009, ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3
- Volume II: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, 2012, ISBN 978-0-253-00202-0
- Volume III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, 2018, ISBN 978-0-253-02386-5
- Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities Under the German Armed Forces, 2022, ISBN 978-0-253-06089-1
References
- ^ a b JTA Staff 2017.
- ^ Megargee, White & Hecker 2018.
- ^ a b c Beorn 2014, p. 349.
- ^ a b c d Lederman 2017a.
- ^ a b Gigliotti 2012, p. 431.
- ^ a b Lederman 2017b.
- ^ a b Lichtblau 2013.
- ^ a b Van Pelt 2014, p. 150.
- ^ a b c Friedrich 2014, p. 441.
- ^ a b c Silver 2013.
- ^ a b USHMM 2018.
- ^ a b Van Pelt 2014, p. 149.
- ^ Beorn 2014, p. 348.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, p. 153.
- ^ a b c d Kassow 2011, p. 469.
- ^ a b Hesse 2009.
- ^ Kassow 2011, pp. 470–472.
- ^ Gigliotti 2012, pp. 432–433.
- ^ a b c Gigliotti 2012, p. 433.
- ^ Beorn 2014, pp. 348–349.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, p. 157.
- ^ Beorn 2014, p. 350.
- ^ Megargee, White & Hecker 2018, pp. ix–xvi.
- ^ Megargee, White & Hecker 2018, pp. xxiii.
- ^ a b Tabachnick, Toby (13 February 2020). "Tens of thousands of Nazi camps catalogued in Holocaust Museum encyclopedia". jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
- ^ "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV". Indiana University Press. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, p. 156.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, pp. 149, 157–158.
- ^ Kassow 2011, p. 472.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, pp. 150–151, 154.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, p. 154.
- ISBN 978-965-308-345-5.
- ^ Van Pelt 2014, pp. 154–156.
- ^ Beorn 2014, pp. 348–350.
- ^ IU 2009.
Scholarly reviews
Volume 1
- Gigliotti, Simone (May 2012). "Review: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945 Volume I". S2CID 162072137.
- .
Volume 2
- ISSN 1476-7937.
- Friedrich, Klaus-Peter (2014). "Review of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA); The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. Vol. 2: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, Geoffrey P. Megargee; The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust. Vol. 1 (A-M): LXXVI. Abb.; Vol. 2 (N-Z); Angst vor den "Ostjuden". Die Entstehung der Ghettos während des Holocaust". Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. 62 (3): 441–445. JSTOR 43819674.
- S2CID 201750296.
News stories
- JTA Staff (5 June 2017). "First Two Volumes of 'Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos' Released". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
- Hesse, Monica (4 June 2009). "U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Encyclopedia on Concentration Camps". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
- Lederman, Noah (25 January 2017a). "Researchers Uncover Vast Numbers of Unknown Nazi Killing Fields". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
- Lederman, Noah (27 January 2017b). "Uncovering My Family's Hidden Holocaust Stories". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
- Lichtblau, Eric (1 March 2013). "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
- Silver, Marc (10 April 2013). "Creating a New Map of the Holocaust". National Geographic. Archived from the originalon April 8, 2013. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
- "U Press Encyclopedia Wins a 2009 National Jewish Book Award". Retrieved 20 March 2017.
Primary sources
- "About the Encyclopedia". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-253-02373-5.
External links
- Official project page at the USHMMweb site
- Free download, Volumes I, II, and III, via the USHMMweb site
- Interview with Geoffrey P. Megargee about the project, 2009