Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945
Cover art of Volume II of the Encyclopedia
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| Editor | Geoffrey P. Megargee |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre |
History Holocaust studies |
| Publisher |
Indiana University Press United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |
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Publication date
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2009 (Volume I) 2012 (Volume II) 2018 (Volume III) |
| Media type | |
| Awards | 2009 National Jewish Book Award |
| Website | Free download via the USHMM web site |
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 is a seven-part encyclopedia series that explores the history of the concentration camps and the ghettos in the occupied Europe during the Nazi era. The series is produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and published by the Indiana University Press.
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 directory is the American historian Geoffrey P. Megargee. As of 2017, two volumes have been issued, with the third being planned for 2018.
Volume I covers the early camps that the SS and the police set up in the first year of the Nazi regime, and the camps ran by the SS Economic Administration Main Office and their numerous sub-camps. The volume contains 1,100 entries written by 150 contributors. The historians Karin Orth and Joseph Robert White provide the introduction to the camp system, its operation and evolution. The bulk of the volume is dedicated to cataloguing the camps, including locations, duration of operation, purpose, perpetrators and victims. Volume II is dedicated to the ghettos in German-occupied Eastern Europe and was published in 2012.
A review in the German Studies Review finds that:
The USHMM Encyclopedia is a highly significant and overdue synthesis of existing documentary studies and specialized knowledge on the history and profile of Nazi concentration camps. (...) The entries themselves are potentially illuminating for historical and social research: not only do they attempt to answer empirical questions of scale, individual involvement, and the impact of concentration camps on victims, but they also provide ways to approach the camp-system monolith, e.g., in interpreting its clustered locations of persecution as expressions of geographies of power, social relations, and communities of genocidal knowledge.
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