Mass Violence in Nazi-occupied Europe

Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe argues for a more comprehensive understanding of what constitutes Nazi violence and who was affected by this violence. The works gathered consider sexual violence, food depravation, and forced labor as aspects of Nazi aggression. Contributors focus in particular on the Holocaust, the persecution of the Sinti and Roma, the eradication of "useless eaters" (psychiatric patients and Soviet prisoners of war), and the crimes of the Wehrmacht. The collection concludes with a consideration of memorialization and a comparison of Soviet and Nazi mass crimes. While it has been over 70 years since the fall of the Nazi regime, the full extent of the ways violence was used against prisoners of war and civilians is only now coming to be fully understood. Mass Violence in Nazi-Occupied Europe provides new insight into the scale of the violence suffered and brings fresh urgency to the need for a deeper understanding of this horrific moment in history.

Il'ya Al'tman is Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, as well as founder and co-chairman of the Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Centre. He is the author of many books including Zhertvy nenavisti: Kholokost v SSSR 1941 – 1945 gg.

Waitman Wade Beorn is Lecturer in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus, which received the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard Press.

Martin Dean worked from 1992 to 1997 for the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit in London. His publications include Collaboration in the Holocaust (2000) and Robbing the Jews.

Gerrit Hohendorf is Associate Professor, MD, psychiatrist, medical historian and medical ethicist. He holds a permanent teaching position at the Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine, Technical University of Munich.

Martin Holler, M.A., studied history and Slavic (Polish and Russian) literature. He is the author of various works on the fate of Roma in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the monograph Der nationalsozialistische Völkermord an den Roma in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941–1944.

Johannes Hürter is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History Munich–Berlin and Professor of Modern History at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. He is the author of Wilhelm Groener: Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932).

Dovid Katz is Professor at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He is the author of numerous books and studies, and has conducted thousands of hours of interviews with Holocaust survivors. His website is www.DovidKatz.net..

Rolf Keller is the head of the department 'Memorials Development in Lower Saxony' at the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation (Stiftung niedersächsische Gedenkstätten), Celle. He is the author most recently of Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im Deutschen Reich 1941/42.

Dan Michman is Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, and serves also as Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Israel. He is the author most recently of The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust.

Hans-Heinrich Nolte was Professor for the History of Eastern Europe in Hanover, 1980–2003, and Guest Professor for Global History in Vienna, 2003–2014. He is the author most recently of World and Global History.

Reinhard has researched and published widely on Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity and in Scandinavia during the Second World War. From 2000 to 2006 he was the academic coordinator of a German-Russian-Belarusian project to unearth German documents concerning prisoners of war in former Soviet archives..

Ulrike Winkler is a German historian and political scientist specialising in the history of Nazi Germany, the history of German social welfare, and disability history. Her website is www.schmuhl-winkler.de.

Wolfgang Wippermann is adjunct Professor for Modern History at Free University, Berlin. His books include Europäischer Faschismus im Vergleich), Totalitarismustheorien and 'Auserwählte Opfer?': Shoah and Porrajmos im Vergleich. Eine Kontroverse.

Alex J. Kay teaches at the University of Potsdam. He is author of Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941.

David Stahel is Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia. His publications include Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East, Kiev 1941, Operation Typhoon, and The Battle for Moscow.