Despite the enduring preoccupation with the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps as the universal symbol of terror, a systematic study of the history of Jewish camp inmates has been long overdue. This gap in the literature is particularly striking with regards to the prewar period of the Third Reich. This talk will present the results of the first full-length scholarly monograph on the history of Jewish prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps 1933-1939. It will examine the pre-war camps as crucial sites of the persecution of the Jews and analyse the importance of the camps in the development of the regime’s antisemitic policies. At the same time, the talk will highlight the impact of camp terror on the victims and their surroundings, and investigates Jewish responses and resistance. Pursuing a novel comparative approach, the study on which this presentation is based expands the narrow focus of most of the newer works in the field of concentration camp research. It investigates more than a dozen camps, from the infamous Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen to less familiar sites and connects to broader historiographical questions on the persecution of the Jews in pre-war Nazi Germany. It uncovers a process of terror meant to identify and isolate German Jews in the period from 1933 to 1939. The concentration camp system was essential to a regime then testing the limits of its power and seeking to capture the hearts and minds of the German public.

The talk will be in Hebrew. 

By: Diana Franklin
Last updated: Wednesday, 18 May 2016