Project: The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945

Abstract

Susanne Heim Project: The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945 In 2008 the first volume of the source edition Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der euro­ päischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945 (The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945) was published. Since then, eight additional volumes have appeared, and seven further volumes are in preparation. The aim of the edition is to present a thematically com­ prehensive and acade­ mically annotated selection of sources on the Holocaust. The edition is structured chrono­ logically and geographically. Each of the sixteen volumes contains between 300 and 330 docu­ ments, as well as an extensive introduction that describes the relevant events on the basis of the current state of research. In the following list of all the volumes, those already published are set in boldface, and the individual compilers are named in parentheses: 1. German Reich, 1933–1937 (Wolf Gruner) 2. German Reich, 1938 – August 1939 (Susanne Heim) 3. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939 – Sep­ tember 1941 (Andrea Löw) 4. Poland, September 1939 – July 1941 (Klaus-Peter Friedrich) 5. Western and Northern Europe, 1940 – June 1942 (Katja Happe, Michael Mayer, Maja Peers) 6. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, October 1941 – spring 1943 (Su­ sanne Heim) 7. Soviet Union and Annexed Territories I (Bert Hoppe, Hildrun Glass) 8. Soviet Union and Annexed Territories II (Bert Hoppe) 9. Poland: General Government, August 1941–1945 (Klaus-Peter Friedrich) 10. Poland: Incorporated Territories, August 1941–1945 (Ingo Loose) 11. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, spring 1943–1945 (Lisa Hauff) 12. Western and Northern Europe, July 1942–1945 (Katja Happe, Barbara Lambauer , Cle­ mens Maier-Wolthausen) 13. Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, 1939–1945 (Barbara Hutzelmann, Mariana Hausleitner, Souzana Hazan) 14. South-Eastern and Southern Europe, 1941–1945: Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania and Italy (Sanela Schmid, Maria Vassilikou, Erwin Lewin, Sara Berger) 192 Susanne Heim 15. Hungary (Regina Fritz) 16. Auschwitz, 1942–1945, and the Death Marches (Andrea Rudorff) The series is scheduled for completion in 2019, at which point it is expected that around 5,000 annotated documents will have been published, a substantial proportion of which will be gathered in the project’s digital database. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation and is being published under the auspices of the Institute for Contemporary History, the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at the Albert-Ludwig-University Freiburg, and the German Federal Archives. The editorial board comprises the directors of the three responsible institutions – Andreas Wirsching, Ulrich Herbert,andMichaelHollmann–inadditiontoHorstMöller,DieterPohl,Susanne Heim, and Sybille Steinbacher. The volumes are being prepared for publication in the Berlin editorial offices and are being published by De Gruyter – Oldenbourg. Initial discussions regarding such a collection date back to the turn of the century. The initiators, who subsequently became members of the editorial board, believed for various reasons that the time was right for such an undertaking . After the expansion of Holocaust research in the 1990s and the improvement in archival conditions after the end of the Cold War, our knowledge of the history of the persecution of the Jews had become considerably more nuanced. The traditional scholarly focus on Hitler and his narrow leadership circle had been replaced by a critical view of the co-responsibility of social elites, state institutions , the non-Jewish populace, and non-German perpetrators. Thus, the wide scope of action for those involved in the Holocaust has become clearer, and it has been established that ideas and initiatives “from below” often solidified and radicalized the policies of the Nazi leadership. As a result, a number of academic controversies of the previous period were rendered obsolete. Against the backdrop of the internationalization of Holocaust research, a degree of consensus has been established regarding the key events and factors that led to the murder of the European Jews. Finally, the inevitable passing of the witness generation has made it imperative to offer a collection of sources documenting the persecution of the Jews to a wider public in a scholarly format. The editors agreed on the following principles...