Call for Articles: Jewish Cemeteries and the Holocaust

We are pleased to share this Call for Articles from the Revue d’histoire de la Shoah, on Jewish Cemeteries and the Holocaust. 

Submissions can be work by historians or focus on other human and social sciences, including literature.

From the Call:

What happened to these cemeteries, some of which were recent, others long established, during Nazi persecution and the Holocaust? Like all Jewish institutions, they came under attack in Germany starting in 1933. […] However, even though many were desecrated, most of the Jewish cemeteries in Germany, and throughout Europe, were not destroyed by the Nazis. Why were they not systematically eradicated in the same way synagogues were? Were they maintained because they symbolized the death of the Jewish people? Did this symbol of a Jewish population’s establishment in a region not contradict the Nazi goal of complete erasure? […]

During the Holocaust, Jewish cemeteries became a transitional place used for a wide range of purposes. They were places of passage and transit, such as the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, which was adjacent to the ghetto. They were places of gathering, when Jews were barred from all other locations, such as in Weissensee [Berlin]; and of refuge. These cemeteries were also a place to store the bodies of Jewish and Gentile victims who were refused the dignity of a decent burial. The cemeteries were transformed from places of respect for the deceased to places where bodies could be dumped and discarded. Mass graves were dug in a number of Jewish cemeteries […] Jewish cemeteries were also used as a place for executions.

After the Holocaust, some of these cemeteries were used very little, if at all, because Jews no longer lived in the city. These abandoned sites bore testimony to the Jewish catastrophe. A movement emerged to re-bury the dead. Surviving family members tracked down the bodies of their beloved ones and transferred them to Jewish cemeteries. […]

The Holocaust is also clearly evidenced by the absence of graves and the space that was never used by drastically reduced communities—initially because of their extermination and later because survivors chose to emigrate. In response to these missing graves, thousands of memorials were erected within the cemeteries themselves […] built for the missing Jews who should have been buried in their community’s cemeteries. 

Jewish cemeteries also have a paradoxical relationship with the Holocaust. On one hand, they are places marked by absence—the absence of those who died, unknown, in death camps as well as the absence of the individual tombs for those buried in mass graves. On the other hand, these cemeteries also contain records and traces. The tombstones of those who died too early bear witness to years of persecution, the empty spaces are a record of the dead who never arrived, and the antiquity of the graves is evidence of the extinction of entire communities. The reburials and memorials also show the will to transfer the victims of the Holocaust to the place where they rightfully belong. Jewish cemeteries are also a place of remembrance, where visitors can think about those who died during the Holocaust, regardless of when and where. They are places for visiting, filming, and dreaming.

The Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah is published by the Mémorial de la Shoah. It is the oldest scientific journal about the Holocaust in continuous publication. It was created in 1946 under the name Le Monde juif (The Jewish World) by a team of historians from the French Contemporary Centre of Jewish Documentation under the direction of David Knout. The two editors are Audrey Kichelewski and Jean-Marc Dreyfus.

Articles should be no longer than 50,000 characters and will be evaluated by two anonymous reviewers. Articles not written in French may be submitted. Following the review process, they will be translated into French by the Revue d’histoire de la Shoah.

Authors are asked to submit a one-page abstract before writing their final article before the 15th of December 2020 .

Click here to see the full Call for Articles