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.

This chapter addresses gender in the context of male-dominated societal and occupational structures during the Second World War; relevance of group dynamics within and between genders in violence-saturated, highly volatile settings (”the East”); discusses masculinity/femininity and rituals of violence during Holocaust, also in light of insights gained by genocide studies.

This chapter depicts the creation, use, and proliferation of imagery by regime propaganda and individuals (despite censorship and prohibitions); discusses problems of the “Nazi gaze” (vis-à-vis victim-generated imagery) and relevance of perpetrator imagery for scholarly analysis (beyond historiography); elimination of corpses (SK 1005) and sites in their interrelation with Nazi attempts to destroy incriminating evidence, and to control messaging and the spatial/physical dimensions of mass violence.

This chapter argues that dispossession is a central aspect of the Holocaust that remains poorly understood. It is understandable that it was long neglected, since understanding mass murder was the primary goal, and the financial and economic story of expropriation was a complex one. However, early books by Frank Bajohr and Martin Dean helped stake out the field, and international legal actions over Swiss banks and German companies also reinforced its importance. The chapter explores the mixture of law and violence that was used to assault Jewish businesses and property, with the emphasis often on the latter. Jewish businesses were able to hold out longest in Berlin, but the pogrom of November 1938, followed by orgiastic looting, was the beginning of the end. The desire to get Jews out of the country was often in conflict with the aim of expropriating them, but once emigration was no longer viable, expropriation and exclusion accelerated, converging in systematic theft and murder. Even then despoliation remained an autonomous but integral aspect.

This chapter discusses Jewish diary writing during the Holocaust as a distinctive form of literary production practiced by Jewish adults, youth, and children across Europe. Jewisih diaries took on particular significance in the context of the Holocaust. They open a window on the cultural, social, and political history of the Holocaust. By preserving victims’ voices, diaries contribute to the writing of new histories of the Holocaust, in particular because of the attention to gender and social relations among victims.

This chapter discusses the relevance of economic factors for Nazi policy in general and the Holocaust in particular against the background of recent historiography (food and labor demands); addresses the role of “big business” and their expectations vis-à-vis the regime for wartime and postwar planning; and exemplifies the tension between macro- and micro-levels, central planning and local implementation in terms of economic viability, political expediency, and human costs.