Thousands of Sites, Millions of Fates: New Insights into the Universe of Nazi Camps

Over the last decades, historical scholarship on the Holocaust has developed a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches. Recent years have seen increased efforts to produce encyclopedias to assemble findings and to provide the scholarly community with source material as a basis for future research. The publication of the USHMM's /Encylopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945/ provides a welcome occasion to talk about the opportunities and challenges of such efforts and to discuss their relevance for historical scholarship on the Holocaust in the 21st century.

The encyclopedia's editor-in-chief, Geoffrey Megargee (USHMM), will present the first volume of the encyclopedia at a joint event by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the German Historical Institute Washington. Susanne Heim (Institut für Zeitgeschichte), co-editor and coordinator of the /Edition zur Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland (1933-1945)/, will comment. A general discussion will follow.