Book contents
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume III
- Introduction to Volume III
- Part I Racism, Total War, Imperial Collapse and Revolution
- Part II World War Two
- 9 From Persecution to Genocide
- 10 Systematic and Ad Hoc Persecution and Mass Murder in the Holocaust
- 11 Jewish Life and Death under Nazi Rule across Europe and around the Globe
- 12 The Nazi Camps and Killing Centres
- 13 State Violence during World War Two
- 14 The Genocide of the Romani People in Europe
- 15 The Nazis and the Slavs
- 16 The Nanjing Massacre
- Part III The Nation-State System during the Cold War
- Part IV Globalisation and Genocide since the Cold War
- Index
10 - Systematic and Ad Hoc Persecution and Mass Murder in the Holocaust
Killings in Eastern Europe outside the Camps
from Part II - World War Two
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2023
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- The Cambridge World History of Genocide
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume III
- Introduction to Volume III
- Part I Racism, Total War, Imperial Collapse and Revolution
- Part II World War Two
- 9 From Persecution to Genocide
- 10 Systematic and Ad Hoc Persecution and Mass Murder in the Holocaust
- 11 Jewish Life and Death under Nazi Rule across Europe and around the Globe
- 12 The Nazi Camps and Killing Centres
- 13 State Violence during World War Two
- 14 The Genocide of the Romani People in Europe
- 15 The Nazis and the Slavs
- 16 The Nanjing Massacre
- Part III The Nation-State System during the Cold War
- Part IV Globalisation and Genocide since the Cold War
- Index
Summary
The Holocaust is often regarded as distinctive because of its organised, industrial-style killing in specially designed extermination camps: Chełmno in the Wartheland; Auschwitz-Birkenau in eastern Upper Silesia; Majdanek and the ‘Reinhard camps’ – Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka – in the General Government in Poland. But around half of the 6 million Jewish victims were killed outside the camps, in fields and forests, in villages and towns across eastern Europe. Murder outside the camps, sometimes dubbed the ‘Holocaust by bullets’, included shooting into ditches, ravines, pits and mass graves, and death through enforced starvation, disease and maltreatment. In the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, Jews were killed not only by invading Germans but also by locals: former neighbours and workmates. These face-to-face killings may appear, at first glance, more like the kinds of genocide that have exploded elsewhere at different times: people killing other people in the localities where they lived. Yet there are significant differences in purpose, scale and complexity.
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- The Cambridge World History of Genocide , pp. 235 - 257Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023