Deportations of the Jewish Population in Territories under Nazi Control. Comparative Perspectives on the Organisation of the Path to Annihilation
The past years have witnessed the rediscovery of collection camps and deportation stations as central sites of the Shoah; memorials and commemorative sites recall the deportation of the Jewish population to ghettos, extermination camps, and sites of mass murder. Studies exist on the execution of deportations from Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Skopje, Salonika, Rome, Milan, as well as from transit camps and ghettos such as Drancy, Fossoli, Westerbork, Theresienstadt, and other places. However, other local and regional sites of deportation, particularly in Central and East-Central Europe, have hardly been examined to date.
A comprehensive, comparative, and analytical overview of deportations from the territories under Nazi control remains a desideratum. This workshop co-organised by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences aims to systematically place existing research results in comparative perspective to one another and thereby to discern commonalities and differences in the organisation and execution of the deportations: How did the identification and internment of the Jewish population proceed? Which organisations were involved in this procedure and/or in the organisation of the transports? What shape did the relationship take between the central switch points of the “Final Solution” (especially the “Eichmann-Referat” in the RSHA) and local Nazi authorities as well as other agents with regard to authority and decision making? In what forms were Jewish organisations forced to collaborate? What role did the institutions in Berlin (1939), Prague (1939), and Amsterdam (1941) play, which were modelled on the “Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung” founded by Adolf Eichmann in Vienna?