Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (original) (raw)

2009, The American Historical Review

The book series Der Ort des Terrors [Place of Terror] provides a survey of the concentration camps and the state of knowledge about this instrument of control in Nazi Germany and the occupied territories. Its subjects are the more than twenty main camps and about 1,000 subordinate camps (Außenlager). The realization of this enormous work drew on countless contributions by researchers from diverse specialist disciplines over the last quarter-century. The first joint volume examined the structures of the Nazi camp system and functional changes in them over time. 1 The subsequent volumes presented the camps chronologically, looking at a plethora of auxiliary camps in Germany. Volume 8 differs from its predecessors insofar as it explores not only camps subject to the SS-Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps (Inspektion der Konzentrationslager), but the Operation Reinhard death camps in the Generalgouvernement of Poland, which came into being thanks to Himmler, his regional representatives, and the Reich chancellery. (Auschwitz is examined in Volume 5, published in 2007, pp 75-311.) Meanwhile, the ambitious project undertaken by Wolfgang Benz, longtime director of the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at Berlin's Technical University, and Barbara Distel, former director of the concentration camp memorial (Gedenkstätte) in Dachau, has reached its conclusion with Volume 9, dealing with institutions similar to the camps proper. 2 The contributions have a similar structure: describing the foundation and development of the camps, their internal organization, and the deeds of the guards and their commanders. The same weight is given to different groups of prisoners, their suffering, powers of self-assertion, and resistance. The authors also investigate the place of the camp within the overall frame of the Holocaust and occupation policy in the country or region under consideration. Franziska Jahn begins Volume 8 with her presentation of the Riga-Kaiserwald camp (pp 17-63), which the German conquerors erected in March 1943 in the part of the Latvian capital known as Mežaparks. It was situated in a formerly elegant suburb, once inhabited by local Germans, not far from the central administration of the Reich commissariat