Subject Guides

Judaic Studies

Resources for Judaic Studies.

The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews, planned, directed, and executed by the National Socialist (Nazi) regime of Germany and its collaborators from 1933-1945.

Here you will find some resources for researching the people, places, and history of the Holocaust.

An excellent place to start is by going to the websites of large Holocaust museums and searching through any bibliographies they have. A great example is the bibliographies from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Encyclopedias

Image result for yellow jewish star holocaustEncyclopedias can be an excellent place to start your research. Here are some good choices for starting your research on the Holocaust.  

 

Researching Specific People and Places by Name

Here are some strategies to find information about specific people:

 

Here are some strategies to find information about specifics towns, cities, and villages:

  • Develop a list of all the alternate spellings of the name, for example Lviv, Lvov, Lwow, Lemberg, etc. The history of places in Europe can be complex: Lviv is now in the Ukraine, but has been part of Poland, Austria, and the USSR.
  • Search the Encyclopedia Judaica and the Holocaust Encyclopedia. This will provide background information.
  • Yizkor books are Holocaust memorial books often written by societies in memory of places destroyed and inhabitants killed. Most are in Hebrew and Yiddish, but some are in English or have sections in English. You can search translations of Yizkor books at the JewishGen.org website.

Primary Sources

This Holocaust page was originally developed by Tom Raffensperger and other PSU library staff in conjunction with faculty from the PSU Harold Schnitizer Family Judaic Studies Program. It was revised by Joan Petit with the assistance of Allen Hauser.