Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
An impressive, well-written study of a little-known chapter in the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Wünschmann has carried out prodigious archival research, unearthing all kinds of interesting and troubling material, particularly on the fate of Jewish citizens who were sent to the camps without trial and held without rights in what the police euphemistically called 'protective custody.' Her book will certainly find a wide readership. Robert Gellately, author of < i=""> Stalins Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War <>
Review
Wünschmann presents a skillfully narrated, analytically rigorous, tightly argued look at the prewar camp system and, more importantly, its immediate impact on the fate of German Jewry. She convincingly asserts that in the formative phase of the evolving system of terror, actions directed against Jews were of central importance to a regime then testing the limits of its expanding power while seeking maximum influence over the hearts and minds of the German public as a whole. Wünschmann persuasively argues that a fresh examination of this early phase in the history of the concentration camps can tell us much about how, feeling its way, yet possessed of an unwavering sense of its mission to root out internal enemies and enact institutional violence, the regime was gaining both experience and strength for even greater transgressions to come. Gordon Horwitz, author of < i=""> Ghettostadt: Ł & oacute;dź and the Making of a Nazi City <>
Review
Wünschmann's fine study argues persuasively that the main purpose of incarcerating German Jews prior to 1939 was to intimidate them into emigration...This is an assiduously researched, rigorously considered and carefully argued book. It combines this rigor with a thoroughly humane perspective on the experiences of the victims, whose sense of horror at early murders and outrage at the denial of their own often deeply felt German identity is captured in Wünschmann's sensitive treatment of sometimes quite difficult material...Indeed, her vivid discussion of the experiences of a wide variety of individuals serves as an uncomfortable reminder of just how prone historians still are to reproducing the homogenising, dehumanising category of 'the Jews' when discussing the Holocaust. Not least for this reason, Wünschmann's book is to be highly commended. Neil Gregor
Review
[A] excellent monograph. Times Higher Education
Synopsis
Nazis began detaining Jews in camps as soon as they came to power in 1933. Kim Wünschmann reveals the origin of these extralegal detention sites, the harsh treatment Jews received there, and the message the camps sent to Germans: that Jews were enemies of the state, dangerous to associate with and fair game for acts of intimidation and violence.
Synopsis
Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research
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 W nschmann 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.
About the Author
Kim Wünschmann is Research Fellow in History at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.