The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945: Volume I. Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps ... SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA) Book

Very few people are aware of the scale of the detention system that existed in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, which held millions of people between 1933 and 1945. Moreover, information about most individual sites is extremely difficult to find. With those points in mind, the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all the camps and ghettos in the territories that Nazi Germany and its allies controlled. The encyclopedia's primary goal is to provide a single source for information about particular sites within the Nazis' system. In addition, scholars will also find aids to further research, so that the work of unearthing this history can continue. This first volume deals primarily with two sets of camps: the early camps, which the SA, the SS, and local authorities set up on an ad-hoc basis to hold the Nazis' political enemies, and the SS concentration camp system, which included some of the Nazis' most notorious camps, such as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, as well as the roughly one thousand satellite camps that the SS established around their main facilities. Each of the entries will provide as much information as possible about a particular site, such as: the founding of the site, its purpose, its organization, and its dissolution; the individuals and entities that administered and guarded the site, and that used the prisoners' labor; the numbers and kinds of prisoners the site held, what kinds of work they did, how they lived and how they died; elements of prisoner culture, such as leadership hierarchies, survival mechanisms and resistance; significant events in the history of the site, such as revolts, and any other elements that made the site unique; and post-war trials of site personnel. Read More