The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945 provides comprehensive documentation of camps, ghettos, and other persecutory sites that the Nazi regime and its allies operated in a vast network spanning from Norway in the North to North Africa in the South, and from France in the West to the Soviet Union in the East. The volumes will document approximately 6,000 sites in narrative format in volumes 1 through 7, and data about an estimated additional 38,000 sites will be contained in the forthcoming Volume 7 database on forced labor camps.
About the Work
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began this project in 1999, expecting to document several thousand sites of Nazi persecution. As meticulous research continuously brings to light never before documented camps, ghettos, and punitive sites run by Germany and its allies, the project now documents several tens of thousands of sites. The Encyclopedia is the most expansive and comprehensive resource on the Nazi camp universe, documenting the ever-changing complexities of the camps and their impact on the fate of inmates.
The Encyclopedia comprises expert scholarly research and a wealth of bibliographic information, making it a crucial resource for scholars and researchers in a variety of fields. The rigorous scholarship is grounded in a variety of source types including hundreds of archival collections, survivor and eyewitness testimonies, memoirs, diaries, and memory books. Works cited include sources in more than a dozen research languages including, but not limited to, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
Each of the Encyclopedia’s seven volumes describes a particular set of sites according to their type or subordination. The entries are further organized to illuminate aspects of the sites' development and operation. In this way, the user can gain an understanding not just of the details of individual sites but of the system as a whole. Photographs, charts, and maps supplement the text. A database will accompany Volume 7 to document an additional 38,000 forced labor camps.
Current Volumes
Learn more about the Encyclopedia’s volumes, contents, and purchase information below.
The first four volumes are available to download free as PDFs now.
Coming in early 2025, the first four volumes will be available as an Open Access, fully searchable, digital publication hosted by Project Muse. This new hosting arrangement will allow users to dynamically engage with this empirically grounded prodigious resource of thousands of Nazi-operated camps, ghettos, and other sites of persecution like never before. As content for upcoming volumes is finalized, it will also be added to Project Muse.
Volume I: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA)
This volume contains entries on 110 early camps, 23 main SS concentration camps (including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau), 898 subcamps, 39 SS construction brigade camps, and three so-called youth protection camps. Introductory essays provide broader context, while citations and source narratives offer the basis for additional research. Volume I received the 2009 National Jewish Book Award and Library Journal’s Best of Reference 2009. It was also designated a Choice Magazine 2010 Outstanding Academic Title.
General Editor: Geoffrey P. Megargee Foreword: Elie Wiesel
Contents (PDF)
Places Index (PDF)
Volume II: Ghettos In German-Occupied Eastern Europe
This volume provides a comprehensive account of how the Nazis established ghettos throughout the scattered towns and villages of Poland and the Soviet Union, an important step in the segregation, concentration, and persecution of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. It covers more than 1,150 sites. Regional essays outline the patterns of ghettoization in 19 German administrative regions. Each entry discusses key events in the history of the ghetto; living and working conditions; activities of the Jewish Councils; Jewish responses to persecution; demographic changes; and details of the ghetto's liquidation. Personal testimonies help convey the character of each ghetto, while source citations provide a guide to additional information. Documentation of hundreds of smaller sites—previously unknown or overlooked in the historiography of the Holocaust—make this an indispensable reference work on the destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
General editor: Geoffrey P. Megargee Volume editor: Martin Dean Introduction: Christopher R. Browning
Contents (PDF)
Places Index (PDF)
Volume III: Camps And Ghettos Under European Regimes Aligned With Nazi Germany
Volume III of the Encyclopedia describes over 700 persecutory sites located in Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, as well as in French and Italian colonies in Africa, and in Italian-occupied territories in Europe. Introductory essays on each of the German-allied countries provide context for the establishment of the various national camp systems. The volume features 124 illustrations and 22 maps.
General editor: Geoffrey P. Megargee Volume editor: Joseph R. White Contributing editor: Mel Hecker
Contents (PDF)
Places Index (PDF)
Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities under the German Armed Forces
This volume documents an under-researched segment of the larger Nazi incarceration system, specifically camps and other detention facilities operating under the direct control of the German military. It includes documentation of prisoner-of-war camps, military brothels, work camps for Tunisian Jews, and military penal camps and prisons. The volume features essays detailing approximately 600 sites, 95 photos, and 23 maps across 808 pages.
Editors: Geoffrey Megargee, Rüdiger Overmans, and Wolfgang Vogt Contributing editor: Mel Hecker
Upcoming Volumes
Volume V: Nazi Sites for Racial Persecution, Detention, Resettlement, and Murder of Non-Jews
This volume documents a variety of penal camps, prisons, and other sites in which mostly non-Jewish prisoners suffered racial persecution and punishment. Specific types of sites include “euthanasia” centers, sites of forced abortion and infanticide, Justice Ministry prisons, so-called work education camps, Gestapo prisons, camps for Roma, “Germanization” facilities, and resettlement camps for Poles.
General editor: Alexandra Lohse Editors: Jan Lambertz and Patricia Heberer-Rice
Volume VI: Extermination, Labor, and Transit Camps for Jews.
This volume documents a range of camps that operated largely outside the concentration camp and ghetto systems and that served the detention, exploitation, and murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
General editor: Alexandra Lohse
Volume VII: Camps for Foreign Forced Laborers
This volume consists of two parts: a narrative volume and a database. The narrative volume consists of 60 overview essays that address the basic features of the Nazi forced labor program; examine the various state and private institutions operating forced labor camps; and document the demographics, experiences, and fates of different inmate groups over the course of the war.
General editor: Alexandra Lohse Editor: Henning Borggräfe
The print volume will be accompanied by a database documenting the basic features of the individual forced labor camps (estimated total of more than 38,000) and serving as a research tool for this vast camp network.
Thanking our Donors
The Museum would like to thank the following donors, without whose support the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos could not exist:
The Helen Bader Foundation
The Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft
The Benjamin and Seema Pulier Charitable Foundation, Inc.
Diane and Howard Wohl
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
With assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany Supported by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future and by the German Federal Ministry of Finance
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The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies is a leading generator of new knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust.