In The Death Camps of Croatia, Raphael Israeli shows that throughout Yugoslavia during World War II, anti-semitism was both deeply rooted and widespread. This book traces the circumstances and the historical context in which the pro-Nazi Ustasha state, encompassing Croatia and Bosnia, erected the Jadovno and Jasenovac death camps. Israeli distills fact and historical record from accusation and grievance, noting that seventy years later, the gap in research and the collection of data, memoirs, and oral histories has become almost irreparable. This volume meets the challenge, basing its conclusions on evidence from participants from the period. The battle between the Serbs and the Croats is not likely to be settled any time soon. Both sides have accused the other of the wrongdoings that everyone knows occurred. While the German Nazis, Croat Ustasha, Serbian collaborators, Cetnicks, and Bosnian Hanjar recruits are often seen as the wrongdoers, there were individuals who helped the Jews, hid them at great risk, and enabled them to survive. These people absorbed the Jews in their own ranks, and gave them the means to fight; they were the only people who helped the Jews. This volume is not about judging one side or the other; it is about acknowledging the evil all sides inflicted upon the Jewish minority in their midst. Serbs, Muslims, and Croats continue to dominate the ex-Yugoslavian scene. It has been their arena of battle for centuries, while the flourishing Jewish minority culture in that area has all but come to a historical standstill and has almost completely vanished. Yet the struggle over the historical record continues.

The Ustasha camp in Jasenovac is a sensitive historical theme, which still provokes strong political conflicts more than 70 years after the closure of the camp. During the time of the second Yugoslavia, the camp was made into a myth and one of the main levers for disciplining the society of the time. The Communist Party imposed the number of 700,000 victims and an exaggerated view of the alleged crimes and methods of killing inmates. The aim was to present itself as sole guarantor of security, because in the case of its "reigning-in", the fratricidal war would happen again, with Jasenovac as its main symbol. Before 1990, an attempt to point out the absurdity of the 700,000 alleged victims of Jasenovac entailed going to prison or compulsory psychiatric treatment. The documents referenced in this book indicate the need to continue with research of the Jasenovac camp and that in a democratic atmosphere, as far as possible, its realistic historical picture may be reached.

The Sobibor Death Camp was the second extermination camp built by the Nazis as part of the secretive Operation Reinhardt—with intent to carry out the mass murder of Polish Jewry. Following the construction of the extermination camp at Belzec in south-eastern Poland from November 1941 to March 1942, the Nazis planned a second extermination camp at Sobibor, and the third and deadliest camp was built near the remote village of Treblinka. Sobibor was similarly designed as the first camp in Belzec, it was regarded as an 'overflow' camp for Belzec. This account of the Nazis' remorseless and relentless production line of killing at the Sobibor death camp tells of one of the worst crimes in the history of mankind. Chris Webb's painstakingly researched volume ranges from the survivors and the victims to the SS men who carried out the atrocities. What makes this work special is the research which has been gathered on the survivors, who by good fortune, courage, and determination survived Sobibor and built new lives for themselves, new families, but bore the scars of this terrible place for all of their lives. Closing a gap in the existing literature, Webb focuses on the victims and presents details of their lives which have been found and re-tells them to keep their memory alive, to show they are not forgotten. The cruel and barbaric murder process is described in great detail, as well as the confiscation of the valuables and possessions of the unfortunate Jews who crossed the threshold of this man-made hell. One cannot fail to be moved by the personal accounts of those who survived, their loved ones perished in this factory of death. The book covers the construction of the death camp, the physical layout of the camp, as remembered by both the Jewish inmates and the SS staff who served there, and the personal recollections that detail the day to day experiences of the prisoners and the SS. The courageous revolt by the prisoners on October 14, 1943 is re-told by the prisoners and the German SS, with detailed accounts of the revolt and its aftermath. The post-war fate of the perpetrators, or more precisely those that were brought to trial, and information regarding the more recent history of the site itself concludes this book. There is a large photographic section of rare and some unpublished photographs and documents from the author's private archive.

The Holocaust – the murder of approximately six million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in the Second World War – was a crime of unprecedented and unparalleled proportions, perpetrated in innumerable locations across the European continent. Now in its third edition, The Holocaust Sites of Europe is the most comprehensive and accessible guide to these sites, serving as both a work of historical reference and a practical resource for visitors to them today. It includes all major Holocaust sites in Europe, covering more than 20 countries and encompassing not only iconic locations such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, but also lesser known yet similarly significant sites like Maly Trostenets and Sajmište. It addresses extermination, forced labour and concentration camps, massacre sites, and cities which were homes to major Jewish populations and – often – ghettos, as well as Nazi 'euthanasia' centres and locations associated with the genocide of Roma and Sinti. In so doing, the book also covers the many museums and memorials which commemorate the Holocaust. This new edition has been fully updated to reflect developments which have affected sites in the 2010s and 2020s, ranging from the establishment of new museums to growing threats from climate change and state-sponsored distortion of history. The Holocaust Sites of Europe is thus an indispensable and sensitive guide to both the history and the modern reality of the most traumatic sites in European history."

The Gulag Survivor is the first book to examine at length and in-depth the post-camp experience of Stalin's victims and their fate in post-Soviet Russia. Based on extensive interviews, memoirs, official records, and recently opened archives, The Gulag Survivor describes what survivors experienced when they returned to society, how officials helped or hindered them, and how issues surrounding the existence of the returnees evolved from the fifties up to the present. Book jacket.

Yellow Star, Red Star asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled—ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated—throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism. Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"—insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotić concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

A Must for anyone planning on visiting the Concentration Camps of Europe. Contains street maps showing exact directions to the sites, walking routes, road signs, bus and train information, opening hours and what remains of the camps today. Includes 45 Street Maps Over 160 Pictures Plus...many useful Websites

Firsthand testimony of survivors and eyewitnesses dramatizes this graphic account of the crimes committed during World War II at Jasenovac, the largest death camp in Yugoslavia. Dedijer's evidence attests to thousands of atrocities and to the complicity of the Catholic Church.