Executive editor: Andrea Löw; English-language edition prepared by: Caroline Pearce, Georg Felix Harsch, and Dorothy Mas This volume chronicles the situation of the Jews in the German Reich and in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia between the start of the Second World War and September 1941. The German authorities used the start of the war on 1 September 1939 as an opportunity to intensify the campaign against the supposed enemies within – primarily the Jews. Thousands of Jews were expelled to Poland and France in initial deportations. Emigration or flight became virtually impossible. In February 1941 a Jewish woman from Vienna feared for her parents: ‘We know now that there is no age limit, everyone is being sent away, little children, the very old, even sick people are taken from the hospital and transported somewhere, into uncertainty, into misery.’ The volume documents the increasing isolation of the German and Czech Jews and the plans and ambitions of their persecutors in the period leading up to the systematic deportations. Learn more about the PMJ on https://pmj-documents.org/

"This source edition on the persecution and murder of the European Jews by Nazi Germany presents in 16 volumes a thematically comprehensive selection of documents on the Holocaust. Volume 1 addresses the persecution of the German Jews between 1933 and 1937, revealing how the disenfranchisement and social isolation of the Jews was driven forward, and which role terror, state calculations, and the indifference of very many Germans played"--

Die Dokumentenedition Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933 - 1945 (VEJ) versammelt erstmals eine thematisch umfassende Auswahl von bislang überwiegend unveröffentlichten Quellen zum Holocaust. Das Werk zeigt die Kontexte und die politischen und gesellschaftlichen Dynamiken, die zu diesem beispiellosen Massenverbrechen führten. Die Edition umfasst 16 Bände mit ca. 5.500 zeitgenössischen, wissenschaftlich kommentierten Zeugnissen der Verfolgten, der Täter und nicht unmittelbar Beteiligter. Für die Bearbeitung der Bände konnten 26 Expertinnen und Experten gewonnen werden. Die Dokumente wurden aus 21 Sprachen ins Deutsche übersetzt. Jedem Band ist eine ausführliche Einleitung vorangestellt, mit mehreren Registern und einem Sachindex können die Dokumente erschlossen werden. Die Bände sind ein vielfältig nutzbares Hilfsmittel sowohl für die Forschung als auch für die historische Bildungsarbeit. Die Edition wurde von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft gefördert und vom Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin, der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg und dem Bundesarchiv herausgegeben. Die preiswerte Broschurausgabe wendet sich an Bildungsinstitutionen wie Schulen, Gedenkstätten und Museen sowie interessierte Personen. Youtube-Link zur VEJ-Abschlusskonferenz Vom 9. bis zum 11. Mai 2023 fand mit "Der Holocaust als europäisches Ereignis" die Abschlusskonferenz der Edition "Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945" im Dokumentationszentrum Topographie des Terrors in Berlin statt.

This source edition on the persecution and murder of the European Jews by Nazi Germany presents in a total of 16 volumes a thematically comprehensive selection of documents on the Holocaust. The work illustrates the contemporary contexts, the dynamics, and the intermediate stages of the political and social processes that led to this unprecedented mass crime. It can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and all other interested parties. The edition comprises authentic testimony by persecutors, victims, and onlookers. These testimonies are furnished with academic annotations and the vast majority of them are published here for the first time in English. Volume 3 documents the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich after the start of the Second World War and in the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, created in March 1939, until September 1941. It reveals the increasing isolation of the German and Czechoslovak Jews but also the perpetrators’ plans up to the eve of systematic deportations.

Many scholars have focused on contemporary sources pertaining to the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews between 1933 and 1945--citing dated documents, newspapers, diaries, and letters--but the sermons delivered by rabbis describing and protesting against the ever-growing oppression of European Jews have been largely neglected. Agony in the Pulpit is a response to this neglect, and to the accusations made by respected figures that Jewish leaders remained silent in the wake of catastrophe. The passages from sermons reproduced in this volume--delivered by 135 rabbis in fifteen countries, mainly from the United States and England--provide important evidence of how these rabbis communicated the ever-worsening news to their congregants, especially on important religious occasions when they had peak attendance and peak receptivity. A central theme is how the preachers related the contemporary horrors to ancient examples of persecution. Did they present what was occurring under Hitler as a reenactment of the murderous oppressions by Pharaoh, Amalek, Haman, Ahasuerus, the Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian Pogroms? When did they begin to recognize and articulate from their pulpits an awareness that current events were fundamentally unprecedented? Was the developing cataclysm consistent with traditional beliefs about God's control of what happened on earth? No other book-length study has presented such abundant evidence of rabbis in all streams of Jewish religious life seeking to rouse and inspire their congregants to full awareness of the catastrophic realities that were taking shape in the world beyond their synagogues.

Eyewitness testimonies of Jews and non-Jews who survived the holocaust explore the behavior of German citizens toward the Jews during the Third Reich.

This edition is the first of its kind to offer a basic collection of facsimile, English language, historical articles on all aspects of the extermination of the European Jews. A total of 300 articles from 84 journals and collections allows the reader to gain an overview of this field. The edition both provides access to the immense, rich array of scholarly articles published after 1960 on the history of the Holocaust and encourages critical assessment of conflicting interpretations of these horrifying events. The series traces Nazi persecution of Jews before the implementation of the "Final Solution", demonstrates how the Germans coordinated anti-Jewish activities in conquered territories, and sheds light on the victims in concentration camps, ending with the liberation of the concentration camp victims and articles on the trials of war criminals. The publications covered originate from the years 1950 to 1987. Included are authors such as Jakob Katz, Saul Friedländer, Eberhard Jäckel, Bruno Bettelheim and Herbert A. Strauss.

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.

The Johovah's Witnesses, members of a religious sect founded in 1872, see themselves as citizens of Jehovah's Kingdom, and thus decline to swear allegiance to any worldly governments.

During World War II at least 13.5 million people were employed as forced labourers in Germany and across the territories occupied by the German Reich. Most came from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, the Baltic countries, France, Poland and Italy. Among them were 8.4 million civilians working for private companies and public agencies in industry, administration and agriculture. In addition, there were 4.6 million prisoners of war and 1.7 million concentration camp prisoners who were either subjected to forced labour in concentration or similar camps or were ‘rented out’ or sold by the SS. While there are numerous publications on forced labour in National Socialist Germany during World War II, this publication combines a historical account of events with the biographies and memories of former forced labourers from twenty-seven countries, offering a comparative international perspective.