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This book provides an authoritative history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and makes a compelling case for why the region can be considered ''the epicentre of the final solution''.Waitman Wade Beorn introduces us to pre-war Jewish life in Eastern Europe, before tracing the escalating nature of Nazi policies in the area during the Second World War. Beorn crucially reflects on the German obsession with the East and its impact on the Nazi genocidal project there. also examines Soviet occupation and its consequences for the Shoah, while offering vital coverage of key themes like ghettoization, the Final Solution, rescue, collaboration, resistance, and many others. The book considers the commonalities and differences of regional Holocaust experiences from the perspectives of perpetrators, witnesses, collaborators, and victims/survivors. Adeptly incorporating material on challenging subjects like sexual violence, the use of slave labour, the treatment of Soviet POWs, and profiteering, this 2nd edition includes two brand new chapters that enhance the scope and usefulness of the text even further; one addresses sources, methods, historiographical debates in the field, and the other focuses on non-Jewish victims of the Nazi genocidal project, such as Soviet prisoners of war, the mental and physically handicapped, Sinti and Roma, and other civilians.>
About the author
Waitman Wade Beorn is Associate Professor in History at Northumbria University, UK. He is the author of Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus (2014, winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize) and of Between The Wires: The Janowska Camp and the Holocaust in Lviv (2024) which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
Summary
An examination of the Nazi genocidal project in Eastern Europe which is inclusive of both its anti-Jewish policy as well as genocide and mass-killing against non-Jews.
