Virtually all countries affected by the Holocaust, and many of those only indirectly implicated, have made efforts to commemorate and memorialize the murder of European Jewry. This encompasses not only physical monuments, but also alternate approaches such as Memorial Books, rituals, liturgy, and memorial days. Many of these started as grassroots initiatives, only to be turned into state-sponsored events. Looking across the postwar decades and comparing memorials from Germany and the USA, this chapter analyzes the complex interplay between artistic choices, educational missions, and political agendas that shaped memorials and their representational strategies and spaces.

This chapter investigates what Primo Levi called the space “which separates the victims from the persecutors.” It uses historical examination, an anthropological approach to morality, and a historiographical review of writing to assess such “gray zones.” These can include stealing food, the role of Jewish physicians, the Sonderkommandos, or decisions made by prisoner functionaries.

In the 1990s, the challenges of representing the (perhaps, arguably) unrepresentable horror of the Holocaust were hotly debated. The issue still poses crucial theoretical questions that have animated a wide array of both scholarly and aesthetic responses. One might think, for instance, of the very different representational strategies adopted by Claude Lanzmann in Shoah and Steven Spielberg in Schindler’s List as marking two ends of the spectrum on how to represent the Holocaust. This chapter articulates the theoretical terrain upon which Holocaust representation unfolds and, in this respect, serves as a theoretical companion to the topic-specific culture chapters that follow.

This chapter describes the “choiceless choices” of the leaders as circumstances changed over time and as a result of Nazi strategies of annihilation. Similarly, the chapter addresses the motivations and strategies of the Jewish police and its role at different stages of the “Final Solution” and how these decisions affected Jews according to gender, age, country of origin, and class.

This chapter offers a political and institutional history of the “most expensive endeavor of restorative justice” ever undertaken, though even this monumental effort pales in comparison with the damage inflicted by the Nazis. Focusing on Germany with an eye toward pan-European developments, it traces the procedures and eligibility, as well as efforts to block, both the restitution of lost property and reparations for past suffering. Restitution and reparations were initially conceptualized broadly, though, over time, Jewish victims became prominent among the recipients. Other Nazi victim groups (e.g., Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, etc.) sometimes faced even greater obstacles to legal recognition and successful claims. The chapter emphasizes the challenges faced by all surviving Nazi victims – Jews and non-Jews alike – in claiming due restitution for their suffering and the grievous harm inflicted on them during the Third Reich.

Antisemitism was a determining feature of Nazi ideology. The racial state was to be established through the so-called “Judenpolitik,” which aimed to “reduce Jewish influence,” make life for Jews in Germany difficult or impossible, and eventually drive Jews out of Germany. Although this policy was directly inspired by Hitler’s own thinking and by Nazi ideology, the resulting discrimination and persecution, culminating in genocide, was not a linear top-down process but rather the result of a dynamic interaction between central Nazi Party and state institutions, often triggered by bottom-up initiatives by local party activists at municipal level. Terror against Jews was used to drive this policy. It encompassed coercion and violence against Jews or people considered to be Jewish accompanied by legal measures to oust Jews from public life in Germany, reflecting what émigré lawyer Ernst Fraenkel described as a “dual state”: a “state of measure or action,” which used terror to quench opposition and fight “racial opponents,” and the “state of norms,” which employed legislation to achieve its aims while preserving legal certainty in order to avoid antagonizing majority society.

Examining rescue during 1940–1945, this chapter asks what possibilities of self-help were available and what strategies were developed to take action? Could Jewish organizations continue to operate under the Nazi regime? What forms of cooperation were forged with non-Jewish organizations and individuals, such as members of the Christian churches, and did these raise chances of survival?

This chapter depicts determining factors for the emergence of ghettos and camps for Jews (continuation of/break with prewar anti-Jewish policies and plans); addresses improvisation based on local/regional conditions/decisions, connections with efforts at “Germanization,” and exploitation; explains evolution over time and highlights patterns and diversity of Jewish confinement via select examples (e.g., big urban ghetto, small ephemeral ghetto, forced labor camp); and addresses the scope, functions, and consequences of violence via spatial segregation by Germans and their surrogates (Jewish councils, surrounding locals).

This chapter summarizes prewar determinants of Western attitudes towards refugees/migrants and their correlation with wartime measures prompted by increasing German violence; and addresses escape logistics (restrictions on transportation, importance of exit/transit/entry permits), relief efforts (for camp inmates, internees, stranded refugees), and the scope/limitations of clandestine efforts (by Jewish and other organizations).

Using examples from Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, this chapter discusses how Jewish leaders were chosen, how these organizations changed over time, the dilemmas they faced, and how decisions were made regarding cooperation or negotiations with Nazis, often on the basis of “preventing something worse.”

This chapter addresses the relevance of German coopting of locals for occupation policy in “the East” in general and the Holocaust in particular; explains prewar experiences (inter-ethnic violence, pogroms) and interests (anti-Bolshevism, nationalism, opportunism) in relation to German measures; showcases specific incidents indicative of broader aspects of indigenous violence (e.g., Jedwabne, Lviv, Kaunas) or lack thereof (Belorusia); and discusses the usefulness and problems of theconcept of collaboration in scholarly and public discourse.

It is unsurprising that the legacy of the Holocaust was central to postwar Europe, but it is striking that the Holocaust became no less important in postwar America. It can be argued that the Holocaust has been “Americanized.” This phrase was initially deployed as a pejorative by critics who decried what they saw as the commercialization and trivialization of Holocaust memory. In some cases, they even argued that Holocaust memory was instrumentalized in the service of specific political agendas – support for Israel and the consolidation of a specifically Jewish identity in a multicultural America. At the same time, given the size and diversity of the Jewish diaspora in the USA, there was no way the Holocaust could not become central to American-Jewish self-understanding and, therefore, become a core part of American culture more broadly.

This chapter explores the rise of inter-ethnic tensions and violence in large parts of Europe in the wake of the First World War through to Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor. Although tensions between aspiring nationalist movements and their imperial overlords had been on the rise from the latter third of the nineteenth century onwards, it was the Great War, the implosion of Europe’s land empires and the proliferation of revolutionary movements of the left and right that created the spaces in which violence became possible. Surveying the situation in different European countries – from Russia in the east to Ireland in the west – the chapter analyzes different patterns and logics of violence that emerged long before the Nazis were a serious political force. Without wanting to exaggerate the role of pre−1933 violence as a precursor to the Holocaust, it is clear that the Nazis’ ever-radicalizing policies against the Jews and other minorities did not come out of nowhere. The Great War had raised, but not solved, many of the issues that allowed Nazism to become a dominant force in German politics in the first place.

This chapter foregrounds the silencing of the experiences of homosexuals under Nazi rule. It discusses the implications of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code and the legal definition of homosexual acts. It examines the way in which fear of persecution and police interrogations shaped the behavior of gay men, while some men maintained a gay lifestyle of sorts. Lesbians remained outside the formal scope of Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which covered only males.