DOCSLIB.ORG

Report – 2019 Warsaw Ghetto Museum 2

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Report – 2019 Warsaw Ghetto Museum 2 Report – 2019 Warsaw Ghetto Museum 2 Ladies and gentlemen, The two years of the existence of the Former Warsaw Ghetto Museum was a time of Warsaw Ghetto Museum hard work. The institution, which was built from scratch, has already marked its presence on the map of Polish culture and memory. We organise outdoor exhibitions; artistic events, scientific conferences and community meetings. We commemorate anniversaries. The Museum has a rich educational offer for students, teachers and guides engaged in historical tourism. You are welcome to take a stroll along the trail of Warsaw Ghetto memorial sites. The Museum cooperates with institutions both in Poland and abroad. We support veterans’ organisations. Our main activity is the development of the Museum, which involves working on a permanent exhibition and preserving the monument – the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital – which will house the Warsaw Ghetto Museum in the future. The year 2019, the first full calendar year of our work, brought challenges to us. We are sharing what we have experienced and asking for your Albert Stankowski support for our actions. Director of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum Photo R. Szymański Albert Stankowski 4 Exhibitions Permanent exhibition In July 2019, the Permanent Exhibition Team on Jewish life in Poland during the German was established, composed of historians occupation, going beyond the framework of from Poland, the USA and Israel. Jewish history in the Warsaw Ghetto. To this Under the direction of the chief historian end, part of the exhibition will be devoted to of the permanent exhibition, Prof. Daniel the history of other ghettos. Blatman, and the Director of the Warsaw b) The history of the Warsaw Ghetto told Ghetto Museum, Albert Stankowski, against the background of the history the team prepared documents containing of occupied Warsaw. The exhibition will the first concept of the whole exhibition focus on the vulnerability of the city and individual galleries, as well to German regulations, which led to as presentations discussing particular the division of both its territory and issues. A time frame has been established; the society. It will show a close connection the narrative will focus on the events of between the ghetto life and the life the 20th century, taking into account of the whole city. the date of construction of the hospital c) The permanent exhibition will strive to (1878) and the charitable activities of convey a universal message, according to the Bersohn and Bauman families. which the tragedy of the Holocaust and The team adopted three key elements the extermination of the Jews in Warsaw is to be conveyed to visitors, especially the starting point for showing humanistic to the younger generation: values ​​such as tolerance, compassion for a) The ability to thoroughly experience and minorities, dialogue between religious, understand the diversity of Jewish life in ethnic and national groups. The destructive Warsaw and the important role of Jews consequences of anti-Semitism in the development and expansion and racism should not only of the city; be remembered forever, but also serve b) The complexity and diversity as a warning for future generations. of relations between the Poles and the Jews The preliminary draft scenario of the before World War II and during the German permanent exhibition has been submitted occupation, including violence and hostility to an independent team of Polish arising alongside help and compassion; and international historians for review. c) Building empathy and understanding Opinions about it have also been expressed of the unique fate of the Polish and Warsaw by the members of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews during the period of extermination Museum Council. planned and carried out by the Germans. The Permanent Exhibition Team together The team also adopted three key with the Investment Department of parameters which will constitute dominant the Warsaw Ghetto Museum is preparing trends in the historical narrative documents for the tender for the concept of the Museum: of the permanent exhibition, the call a) The presentation of a broad perspective forwhich is to be announced in 2020. 5 6 Wyprostowani, nieugięci... (Standing up of 1940s and 1950s, and to introduce straight, unbent...) Natan Rapoport and the figure of its creator Nathan Rapoport - the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes an internationally renowned sculptor, the author of monuments commemorating – square at the Monument to the Ghetto the Holocaust around the world (e.g. in the Heroes in Warsaw (18 April - 30 October USA, Europe, Israel) who in his youth was 2019) connected with Warsaw and its artistic The exhibition was devoted to the life community. and work of the author of the design The exhibition was based on photographic of the monument - Natan Rapoport materials presenting the artist (Warsaw, 1911 - New York, 1987) and and his works, designs of the Monument the monument itself. Its purpose was to the Ghetto Heroes, its unveiling to show the history of constructing ceremony, interviews and press reviews. of the monument in the socio-political Approximately 45,000 people saw and cultural context the exhibition. Standing up straight, unbent... Photo MGW/ The Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital M. Nowak Photo WGM/M. Nowak Temporary exhibitions A witness to history. The Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital Standing - the fence of the Bersohn and Bauman an art historian and critic, included up straight, unbent... Hospital at 60 Sienna Street in Warsaw 20 boards. The concept was prepared Photo MGW/ (23 July 2018 - 31 January 2019) by Dr. Hanna Węgrzynek, deputy director M. Nowak for research and exhibition. The exhibition, The first exhibition prepared opened on 23 July 2018, has been by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. included in the commemoration of The outdoor photographic exhibition the 76th anniversary of the mass on the fence of the former hospital deportation of Warsaw Jews to building, which will become the seat the Treblinka extermination camp. of the Museum in the future, reminded The exhibition attracted a lot of interest of the history of this historic building. and was often shown by Warsaw guides The exhibition, curated by Dr. Ewa Toniak, during tours of the former ghetto. 7 8 Standing up straight, unbent... Photo MGW/ M. Nowak Postcards from our neighbourhood, Photo MGW/ J. Turczy Photo MGW/ M. Nowak Standing up straight, unbent... Photo MGW/ M. Nowak Postcards from our neighbourhood... The history of Sienna and Śliska Streets Photo MGW/ M. Nowak – the fence of the Bersohn and Bauman the Second Polish Republic, World War Hospital building at 60 Sienna street in II, when both streets were part of the Warsaw (from 15 May 2019) socalled small ghetto, and post- war times. The exhibition upholds the memory The aim of the exhibition is to show of the multiculturalism of Warsaw and the history of both streets, from the Jewish community that once lived the early nineteenth century to 1960s here, and at the same time disseminates using the photographs showing information about the Museum and its the no longer existing buildings and street target seat. It is based on photographic scenes as well as posters informing materials from many national and foreign about political, cultural and educational archives. It is estimated that by the events. Iconographies and documents end of 2019 the exhibition was seen by from the period of the Russian partition, approximately 30,000 people. 9 10 Warsaw in Three Portraits (8 September 2019-31 January 2020) Collection – Grzybowski Square The collection of the Museum includes Ghetto purchased together with the The exhibition has been organised in accompanying its turbulent history. interesting items acquired as gifts Nissenbaum Family Foundation, wagons connection with the commemoration These changes are shown on the example and through purchase. These include for removing debris from the former of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of 12 streets that were located in the Judaica, documents from the occupation ghetto area, items related to hospital of World War II. It presented three ghetto or its vicinity during the war. It is period, photographs, postcards, objects equipment, such as medical equipment, portraits of Warsaw: pre-war, war and estimated that the exhibition was seen by of everyday use, as well as a cart for furniture from the era. reconstruction times, which show the approximately 80,000 people. transporting corpses in the Warsaw changing image of the city, The cart for transporting Warsaw in corpses Three Portraits, in the Warsaw Grzybowski Ghetto, Square in purchased with Warsaw. the support Photo WGM/ of the M. Nowak Nissenbaum Family Foundation, Photo: WGM The museum’s collection has also been of the Warsaw Ghetto and portraits enriched with works of art, such as of Holocaust survivors who lived Lower the quadriptych of the contemporary Silesia, Łódź and Warsaw after artist Krzysztof Augustin. Particularly the war. The collection was donated valuable is the donated collection of 76 by Rachela and Kristyna Postavsky from drawings by Henryk Hechtkopf. It consists Israel. The works will be submitted of two series of works created in the years to a microbiological expertise and then 1945-1955, depicting the ruins subjected to maintenance. 11 12 Kristyna In 2019, works were initiated on of Conservation and Restoration of Postavski, a reconstruction and thorough Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Zichron Yaakov, Israel 2019 conservation of marble foundation in Warsaw as part of
Load more

Recommended publications
  • What Happened in Warsaw?
    What happened in Warsaw? A WWII mystery RPG by Jan “Crowen” Rosa ​ Written for the Golden Cobra 2018 Challenge ​ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = TOP SECRET - REPORT K45W0017 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Chapter 1 - Warsaw Incident and the analysis of the following events In 1939, German authorities began to concentrate Poland's population of over three million Jews into a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 300,000–400,000 people into a densely packed, 3.3 km2 central area of Warsaw. Approximately 250,000–300,000 ghetto residents met their deaths at Treblinka during the two-month-long operation in 1942, another thousands in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. On 1 August 1944, The Warsaw Uprising began as part of a nationwide Operation Tempest, launched at the time of the Soviet Lublin–Brest Offensive. Our objectives were to drive the Germans out of Warsaw while helping the Allies defeat Germany. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup. Initially, we established control over most of central Warsaw, but the Soviets ignored our attempts to maintain radio contact with them and did not advance beyond the city limits. Intense street fighting between us and the Germans continued. By 14 September, the eastern bank of the Vistula River opposite our positions was taken over by the Polish troops fighting under the Soviet command. 1,200 men made it across the river, but they were not reinforced by the Red Army.
    [Show full text]
  • Supplemental Assets – Lesson 6
    Supplemental Assets – Lesson 6 The following resources are from the archives at Yad Vashem and can be used to supplement Lesson 6, Jewish Resistance, in Echoes and Reflections. In this lesson, you learn about the many forms of Jewish resistance efforts during the Holocaust. You also consider the risks of resisting Nazi domination. For more information on Jewish resistance efforts during the Holocaust click on the following links: • Resistance efforts in the Vilna ghetto • Resistance efforts in the Kovno ghetto • Armed resistance in the Sobibor camp • Resistance efforts in Auschwitz-Birkenau • Organized resistance efforts in the Krakow ghetto: Cracow (encyclopedia) • Mordechai Anielewicz • Marek Edelman • Zvia Lubetkin • Rosa Robota • Hannah Szenes In this lesson, you meet Helen Fagin. Learn more about Helen's family members who perished during the Holocaust by clicking on the pages of testimony identified with a . For more information about Jan Karski, click here. In this lesson, you meet Vladka Meed. Learn more about Vladka's family members who perished during the Holocaust by clicking on the pages of testimony identified by a . Key Words • The "Final Solution" • Jewish Fighting Organization, Warsaw (Z.O.B.) • Oneg Shabbat • Partisans • Resistance, Jewish • Sonderkommando Encyclopedia • Jewish Military Union, Warsaw (ZZW) • Kiddush Ha-Hayim • Kiddush Ha-Shem • Korczak, Janusz • Kovner, Abba • Holocaust Diaries • Pechersky, Alexandr • Ringelblum, Emanuel • Sonderkommando • United Partisan Organization, Vilna • Warsaw Ghetto Uprising •
    [Show full text]
  • Holocaust Memorial Days an Overview of Remembrance and Education in the OSCE Region
    Holocaust Memorial Days An overview of remembrance and education in the OSCE region 27 January 2015 Updated October 2015 Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2 Albania ................................................................................................................................. 13 Andorra ................................................................................................................................. 14 Armenia ................................................................................................................................ 16 Austria .................................................................................................................................. 17 Azerbaijan ............................................................................................................................ 19 Belarus .................................................................................................................................. 21 Belgium ................................................................................................................................ 23 Bosnia and Herzegovina ....................................................................................................... 25 Bulgaria ...............................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Institute of National Remembrance
    Institute of National Remembrance https://ipn.gov.pl/en/news/8027,The-IPN-paid-tribute-to-the-insurgents-from-the-Warsaw-Ghetto.html 2021-09-30, 23:04 19.04.2021 The IPN paid tribute to the insurgents from the Warsaw Ghetto The IPN paid tribute to the insurgents from the Warsaw Ghetto on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the Uprising. The Deputy President of the Institute, Mateusz Szpytma Ph.D., and the Director of the IPN Archive, Marzena Kruk laid flowers in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw on 19 April 2021. On 19 April 1943, fighters from the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) mounted armed resistance against German troops who liquidated the ghetto. It was the last act of the tragedy of Warsaw Jews, mass-deported to Treblinka German death camp. The Uprising lasted less than a month, and its tragic epilogue was the blowing up of the Great Synagogue in Tłomackie Street by the Germans. It was then that SS general Jürgen Stroop, commanding the suppression of the Uprising, who authored the report documenting the course of fighting in the Ghetto (now in the resources of the Institute of National Remembrance) could proclaim that "the Jewish district in Warsaw no longer exists." On the 78th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Institute of National Remembrance would like to encourage everyone to learn more about the history of the uprising through numerous publications, articles and educational materials which are available on the Institute's website and the IPN’s History Point website: https://ipn.gov.pl/en https://przystanekhistoria.pl/pa2/tematy/english-content The IPN has been researching the history of the Holocaust and Polish- Jewish relations for many years.
    [Show full text]
  • Index of Subjects
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-83875-7 - Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Racial Aims, 1938-1944 Wolf Gruner Index More information Index of Subjects Aktion Erntefest, 271 Autobahn camps, 286 Aktion Hase, 96 acceptance/rejection of Jews for, 197, Aktion Mitte B, 97 198 Aktion Reinhard, 258 administration of by private companies, Aktion T4, 226 203 Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK). See closing of, 208, 209, 211 General Local Health Insurance control of by Autobahn authorities, 199, Provider. 203, 213, 219 Annexation of Austria. See Anschluss. control of by SS (Schmelt), 214, 223 Anschluss (annexation of Austria), xvi, xxii, employing Polish Jews, 183, 198, 203, 3, 105, 107, 136, 278 217, 286 Anti-Jewish policy locations of, 203, 212, 219, 220 before 1938, xx, xxii, xxiv redesignation of as “Zwangsarbeitslager,” central measures in, xxi, xxii, xxiii 223 consequences of for Jews, xvi, 107, 109, regulations for, 199, 200, 203, 212 131, 274 See also Fuhrer’s¨ road and Schmelt forced contradiction in, 109 labor camps. diminished SS role in, 240, 276 Autobahn construction management division of labor principle in, xvii, xviii, headquarters (Oberste Bauleitung der xxiv, 30, 112, 132, 244, 281, 294 Reichsautobahnen) effect of war on, 8, 9, 126, 141, 142 in Austria, 127 forced labor as element of, x, xii, xiii, 3, 4, in Berlin, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 177, 276 206 in Austria, 136 in Breslau, 204, 205, 211, 212, 220, local-central interaction in, xx, xxi, xxii 222 local measures in, xxi, xxii, xxiii, 150, in Cologne, 205 151 in Danzig, 203, 204, 205 measures implementing, 151, 172, 173, See also Reich Autobahn Directorates.
    [Show full text]
  • Additional Research Notes
    Additional Research Notes Below is more information related to Joe’s story, including concen tration camps, ship transporting dislocated persons, camp for dislocated persons, camp commandants/other Nazi officials and their fate, and famous shoe companies. 1. Concentration Camps A. Auschwitz/Birkenau, Poland (Concentration Camp) Author’s Note : Joe arrived at Auschwitz on April 30, 1942 and was housed at its sister camp, Birkenau, or “Auschwitz II,” where two days a week he was forced to move the bodies of the dead from the gas chamber to open pits. He was also required to do daily calisthenics and work in many other areas around the camp, including snow removal on the massive grounds. Joe was eventually assigned to a slave labor crew working in a nearby coal mine. For a short while, the inmate miners were forced to walk several miles each day to the coal mine and back. When Joe was finally moved from Birkenau to a camp near the coal mine, he le Auschwitz for the last time, but the mining camp remained under the authority of Auschwitz. Joe permanently lost the hearing in one ear from the repeated explosions of dynamite. Documents provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., show that in June 1944, Joe (Juzek Rubinsztein) was sent from the Auschwitz complex (we believe from the Jawischowitz Sub-camp/Brzeszcze Coal Mine) to Buchenwald, Germany. His official number while at Auschwitz was 34207. At Buchenwald, his number was 117.666. 1, 2 e Auschwitz Concentration Camp, located thirty-seven miles west of Krakow, near the Polish city of Oswiecim, was in an area annexed by Nazi Germany in 1939 aer its invasion of Poland.
    [Show full text]
  • The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum
    53 REMEMBRANCE INSTITUTION Franciszek Dąbrowski PhD Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw, Poland War Studies University, Warsaw, Poland ORCID 0000-0002-4255-6985 Web of Science ResearcherID S-6250-2017 THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU MUSEUM & MEMORIAL SITE THE FORMER GERMAN NAZI CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP: THE HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTION OF MEMORY AND ITS OPERATING PRINCIPLES Abstract The paper describes the activities, structures and tasks of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, one of the most important remembrance institutions and the most important Holocaust Memorial in Poland. The short outline of the camp’s wartime history is followed by sections concerning the post-war site’s use and commemoration, the forming of the Museum, concepts of its shape, and contemporary challenges to its activities. The selected Museum’s structures were discussed: the archives, exhibitions, research, collections, conservation and visitor services departments. Keywords: Auschwitz, Holocaust Memorial, archives, museum collections, conservation, research Institute of National Remembrance 2/2020 54 INTRODUCTION The Protected Site and the Museum’s History he museum and memorial site located at the former T concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was REMEMBRANCE INSTITUTION established in 1947 as the Oświęcim-Brzezinka State Museum. In 1999 the museum was renamed as the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau). In 1979 the sites in the museum’s custody—the remains of the concentration camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau—were registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list as the “Auschwitz Concentration Camp”. In 2007 the name on the list was revised to “the Former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau”.
    [Show full text]
  • Inferno Nowe.Indd
    The Publisher thanks all Contributors for kindly permitting to print their texts in this volume All rights reserved Cover and title pages design: Jacek Tofil Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Gołębiowska © Copyright by Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2012 Second edition Bibliographical Note: This is the second, revised and expanded edition of Inferno of Choices: Poles and the Holocaust, first published by Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, in 2011. Two new chapters have been provided for this edition. Proofreading: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM Layout and typeset by: Studio Graficzne Oficyny Wydawniczej RYTM [email protected] ISBN 978-83-7399-514-7 Print and binding: Łódzkie Zakłady Graficzne Sp. z o.o. Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................... 9 Introduction by Maciej Kozłowski ................................... 11 I. Documents .................................................................... 15 Announcement by the executive authority of the Jewish Re- ligious Community to the Jewish population of the town of Piotrków on the establishment of a ghetto. Piotrków, Octo- ber 1939 ..................................................................................... 15 A circular from senior SS and police commander for Warth- egau, Wilhelm Koppe on the plan for the resettlement of Jews and Poles to the General Government [excerpts]. Poznań, November 1939 ......................................................... 16 A Report from Waldemar Schön, Head of the Resettlement Department of the Office of the Governor
    [Show full text]
  • Smith's Report, No
    SMITH’S REPORT On the Holocaust Controversy No. 146 www.Codoh.com January 2008 Challenging the Holocaust Taboo Since 1990 THE MAN WHO SAW HIS OWN LIVER Introduction: Death and Taxes Richard “Chip” Smith Nine Banded Books is a new publishing house that has chosen to make my manu- script, The Man Who Saw His Own Liver, its first publication, which is an honor I very much appreciate. Chip Smith is the head honcho there and has done everything right, be- ginning with the imaginative idea of transposing the format of my one-character play, The Man Who Stopped Paying, into that of a short novel, The Man Who Saw His Own Liver. Not one word has been changed. It has been formatted in a simple, unique, and imaginative way, and is followed by a coda that, again, is an imaginative choice that never would have occurred to me. The Man Who Saw His Own Liver is at the printer now and we expect to have it to hand the first week in February. Following is the elegant and rather brilliant introduction written by the publisher. radley Smith is one of those writers. Like Hunter Thompson or Hubert Selby; like B Brautigan, Bukowski, or the Beats. You read him when you’re young. You read him with a rush of discovery never to be forgotten. The prose is clean and relaxed and punctuated with a distinct, tumbling, rhythmic flair. It goes down easy. It makes you want to write. The world Smith made is suffused with a restless vitality that feels personal and true.
    [Show full text]
  • Music in Concentration Camps 1933 Music In
    Music in Concentration Camps 19331933––––19451945 GUIDO FACKLER Translated from the German by Peter Logan (Würzburg) It would be wrong to reduce the “Music of the Shoah” (Holocaust/ churbn ) to the Yiddish songs from the ghetto camps of Eastern Europe or to the multiple activities in the realm of classical or Jewish music found in the ghetto camp at Theresienstadt (Terezín), which of course enjoyed a special status as a model camp. It would be equally wrong to restrict our view of music in concentration camps to the “Moorsoldatenlied” (“The Peat Bog Soldiers”), the “Buchenwald Song,” the “Dachau Song,” or the so-called “Girls’ Orchestra in Auschwitz,” described by Fania Fénelon – also the subject of the Hollywood film entitled “Playing for Time”. 1 Instead of this, I wish to address the topic of musical activities in general in the concentration camps. 2 Thus this chapter is about those camps that the Nazi regime started to erect just a few weeks after Hitler’s assumption of power; these camps formed the seed from which the entire system of Nazi camps grew, and which eventually consisted of over 10,000 camps of various kinds. 3 In fact music was an integral part of camp life in almost all the Nazi-run camps. The questions covered by my research include: how was it possible to play music in these camps? What musical forms developed there? What, under these circumstances was the function, the effect and the significance of music for both the suffering inmates and the guards who inflicted the suffering? And how was the extent of musical activities affected by the development of the concentration camp system? My research is based on extensive archive work, the study of memoirs and literature, and interviews with witnesses.
    [Show full text]
  • Print This Article
    Tryuk, M. (2016). Interpreting and translating in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series: Themes in Translation Studies, 15, 121–141. Interpreting and translating in Nazi concentration camps during World War II Małgorzata Tryuk University of Warsaw, Poland [email protected] This article investigates translation and interpreting in a conflict situation with reference to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In particular, it examines the need for such services and the duties and the tasks the translators and the interpreters were forced to execute. It is based on archival material, in particular the recollections and the statements of former inmates collected in the archives of concentration camps. The ontological narratives are compared with the cinematic figure of Marta Weiss, a camp interpreter, as presented in the docudrama “Ostatni Etap” (“The last Stage”) of 1948 by the Polish director Wanda Jakubowska, herself a former prisoner of the concentration camp. The article contributes to the discussion on the role that translators and interpreters play in extreme and violent situations when the ethics of interpreting and translation loses its power and the generally accepted norms and standards are no longer applicable. 1. Introduction Studies on the roles of translators and interpreters in conflict situations have been undertaken by numerous scholars since 1980. They have produced valuable insights into the subject which include various types of study of an empirical, analytical
    [Show full text]
  • An Organizational Analysis of the Nazi Concentration Camps
    Chaos, Coercion, and Organized Resistance; An Organizational Analysis of the Nazi Concentration Camps DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Thomas Vernon Maher Graduate Program in Sociology The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. J. Craig Jenkins, Co-Advisor Dr. Vincent Roscigno, Co-Advisor Dr. Andrew W. Martin Copyright by Thomas V. Maher 2013 Abstract Research on organizations and bureaucracy has focused extensively on issues of efficiency and economic production, but has had surprisingly little to say about power and chaos (see Perrow 1985; Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006), particularly in regard to decoupling, bureaucracy, or organized resistance. This dissertation adds to our understanding of power and resistance in coercive organizations by conducting an analysis of the Nazi concentration camp system and nineteen concentration camps within it. The concentration camps were highly repressive organizations, but, the fact that they behaved in familiar bureaucratic ways (Bauman 1989; Hilberg 2001) raises several questions; what were the bureaucratic rules and regulations of the camps, and why did they descend into chaos? How did power and coercion vary across camps? Finally, how did varying organizational, cultural and demographic factors link together to enable or deter resistance in the camps? In order address these questions, I draw on data collected from several sources including the Nuremberg trials, published and unpublished prisoner diaries, memoirs, and testimonies, as well as secondary material on the structure of the camp system, individual camp histories, and the resistance organizations within them. My primary sources of data are 249 Holocaust testimonies collected from three archives and content coded based on eight broad categories [arrival, labor, structure, guards, rules, abuse, culture, and resistance].
    [Show full text]