Before Auschwitz : Jewish prisoners in the prewar concentration camps / Kim Wünschmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wünschmann, Kim, author.

Contributor:

De Gruyter.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nazi concentration camps--Germany--History--20th century.

Nazi concentration camps.

Jews--Persecutions--Germany--History--20th century.

Jews.

Jews--Persecutions.

History.

Germany.

Modern History.

Regional History.

Ethnic relations.

Political science.

Germany--Ethnic relations.

Germany--Politics and government--1933-1945.

Politics and government.

Local Subjects:

History.

Modern History.

Regional History.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Dictionaries.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 pages)

Contained In:

De Gruyter University Press Library.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

text file PDF

Summary:

Auschwitz-the largest and most notorious of Hitler's concentration camps-was founded in 1940, but the Nazis had been detaining Jews in camps ever since they came to power in 1933. Before Auschwitz unearths the little-known origins of the concentration camp system in the years before World War II and reveals the instrumental role of these extralegal detention sites in the development of Nazi policies toward Jews and in plans to create a racially pure Third Reich. Investigating more than a dozen camps, from the infamous Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen to less familiar sites, Kim Wünschmann uncovers a process of terror meant to identify and isolate German Jews in the period from 1933 to 1939. The concentration camp system was essential to a regime then testing the limits of its power and seeking to capture the hearts and minds of the German public. Propagandized by the Nazis as enemies of the state, Jews were often targeted for arbitrary arrest and then routinely subjected to the harshest treatment and most punishing labor assignments in the camps. Some of them were murdered. Over time, shocking accounts of camp life filtered into the German population, sending a message that Jews were different from true Germans: they were portrayed as dangerous to associate with and fair game for acts of intimidation and violence. Drawing on a wide range of previously unexplored archives, Before Auschwitz explains how the concentration camps evolved into a universally recognized symbol of Nazi terror and Jewish persecution during the Holocaust.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. In the Beginning There Was Violence: "Protective Custody" and Arrests of Jews, 1933-1934

2. Inside the Early Concentration Camps: Abuse, Isolation, and Murder of Jews, 1933-1934

3. Her Transport to the Concentration Camp Has Been Ordered: Arrests and Imprisonment of Jewish Women, 1933-1939

4. Cementing the Enemy Category: Jews in the Evolving SS Concentration Camp System, 1935-1938

5. Instruments of Mass Persecution: The Concentration Camps and Anti-Jewish Policy in 1938

6. The Calm after the Storm? Jews in the Concentration Camps in 1939

Conclusion

Appendix: SS Ranks and U.S. Army Equivalents

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Nov. 30., 2016)

ISBN:

9780674425569

OCLC:

904398276

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.