A two-volume set. Seventy years after the outbreak of World War II, most of the European ghettos have still not been systematically researched. This pioneering two-volume encyclopedia gathers data from historical studies, testimonies, and documents dealing with more than 1,100 ghettos throughout Eastern Europe. This encyclopedia offers detailed entries on the various ghettos into which the Jews of Eastern Europe were confined during the Holocaust. Entries on each ghetto are written by scholars and specialists on their topic and include location, wartime name, and geographical coordinates, and, for the larger ghettos, information on life before World War II and during the Soviet occupation era, German (Nazi) occupation, ghetto structure, institutional life and leadership, terror and killing operations, underground resistance, and the number of survivors at liberation. They also describe the differences between each ghetto and examine the difficulties of daily life in the ghetto, coping strategies, and different forms of resistance. The first reference book of its kind, The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust is a valuable resource for diverse disciplines and is supplemented by a special DVD of wartime footage of ghettos filmed in real time during the Holocaust.

Author Biography

Former Dean of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, Guy Miron is currently a lecturer at the Institute and has been a visiting professor at Rutgers University. He is the author of several books, including German Jews in Israel: Memories and Past Images. Michael Berenbaum is the director of the Sigi Ziering Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics at American Jewish University, where he is also a professor of Jewish Studies. He is the author of several books, including A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of Its Survivors.