Selected Readings on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe
This list is intended merely to provide a brief introduction to the mountains of source material available. It lists only books in English but naturally there are many articles in scholarly journals and foreign languages that are critical to understanding the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
Eastern European Jewish History
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Gitelman, Zvi Y. Bitter legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
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Goldstein, Phyllis. A Convenient Hatred the History of Antisemitism. Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves, 2012.
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Haumann, Heiko. A History of East European Jews. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002.
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Katz, Steven T. The Shtetl: New Evaluations. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
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Petersen, Hans Christian, and Samuel Salzborn, eds. Antisemitism in Eastern Europe. edited by Samuel Salzborn. Vol. 5, Politische Kulturforschung. Peter Lang GmbH: Frankfurt am Main, 2010.
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Pinchuk, Ben-Cion. Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule: Eastern Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust. Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell, 1991.
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Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
General Holocaust in Eastern Europe
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Adelman, Jonathan R., ed. Hitler and His Allies in World War II. New York: Routledge, 2007.
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Arad, Yitzhak. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
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Arad, Yitzhak, Schmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, eds. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign against the Jews, July 1941-January 1943. New York, N.Y.: Holocaust Library, 1989.
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Beorn, Waitman Wade. The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2018.
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Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
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Corni, Gustavo. Hitler's Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society, 1939-1944. London : Arnold: New York, 2002.
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David-Fox, Michael, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, eds. The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses. Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014.
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Dean, Martin, and Geoffrey P. Megargee, eds. Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos II: Ghettos in Occupied German-Occupied Eastern Europe. Vol. A. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
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Dean, Martin, and Geoffrey P. Megargee, eds. Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos II: Ghettos in Occupied German-Occupied Eastern Europe. Vol. B. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
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Desbois, Patrick. The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
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Dobroszycki, Lucjan Gurock Jeffrey S. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction
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of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941-1945. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1993.
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Haynes, Rebecca, and Martyn Rady, eds. In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2011.
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Hedgepeth, Sonja M., and Rochelle G. Saidel, eds. Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010.
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Matthäus, Jürgen, and Frank Bajohr, eds. The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust, Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
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Mazower, Mark. Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. New York: Penguin Press, 2008.
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Michman, Dan. The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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Rabinbach, Anson, and Sander L Gilman, eds. The Third Reich Sourcebook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
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Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
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Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2012.
Third Reich History
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Böhler, Jochen, and Robert Gerwarth. The Waffen-SS: A European History. First edition ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
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Browning, Christopher R., and Jürgen Matthäus. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
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Gerwarth, Robert. Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
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Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. Jerusalem: International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, 2008.
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Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.
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Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Lower, Wendy. Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
War in the East
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Bartov, Omer. Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
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Beorn, Waitman Wade. Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
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Heer, Hannes. War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941-1944. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000.
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Kay, Alex J., Jeff Rutherford, and David Stahel, eds. Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012.
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Megargee, Geoffrey P. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
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Shepherd, Ben. War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.
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Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
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Wette, Wolfram. The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Camps
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Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka the Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
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Browning, Christopher R. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
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Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. van Pelt. Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present. 1st ed. New York: Norton, 1996.
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Mailänder, Elissa, and Patricia Szobar. Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration
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Camp, 1942-1944. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015.
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Montague, Patrick. Chełmno and the Holocaust: The History of Hitler's First Death Camp. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
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Rees, Laurence. Auschwitz: A New History. New York: Public Affairs, 2005.
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Schelvis, Jules. Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp. Translated by Karin Dixon. London: Bloomsbury in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007.
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Schüle, Annegret, and Rikola-Gunnar Lüttgenau. The Engineers of the Final Solution: Topf and Sons- Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens. Weimar: Stiftung Gedamstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, 2005.
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Wittmann, Rebecca. Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Memoirs and Testimony
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Blatt, Thomas Toivi. From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997.
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Czerniaków, Adam, Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz. The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom. Translated by Stanislaw Staron. New York: Stein and Day, 1979.
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Dobroszycki, Lucjan, ed. The Chronicle of the Łódź ghetto, 1941-1944. Abridged ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984.
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Folkmann, Adolf, and Stefan Szende. The Promise Hitler Kept. New York: Roy Publishers, 1945.
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Kaplan, Chaim. The Warsaw Diary of Chaim Kaplan. Translated by Abraham I. Katsh. New York, NY: Collier Books, 1973.
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Kessler, Edmund. The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler: Lwow, Poland, 1942-1944. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2010.
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Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. New York: Collier Books, 1993.
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Lower, Wendy, ed. The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia. Lanham: Altamira Press in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011.
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Redner, Ben Zion. A Jewish Policeman in Lwów: An Early Account 1941-1943. Translated by Jerzy Michalowicz. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, 2015.
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Sakowicz, Kazimierz, and Yitzhak Arad. Ponary Diary, 1941-1943: A Bystander's Account of a Mass Murder. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
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Sierakowiak, Dawid, Alan Adelson, and Kamil Turowski, eds. Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak. Cary, US: Oxford University Press (US), 2006.
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Tec, Nechama. In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
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Tory, Avraham, Martin Gilbert, and Dina Porat. Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
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Venezia, Shlomo, and Béatrice Prasquier. Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz. Translated by Andrew Brown. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009.
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Wells, Leon Weliczker. The Janowska Road. New York: MacMillan Company, 1963.
By Country
Belarus
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Cohen, Laurie R. Smolensk under the Nazis : Everyday Life in Occupied Russia. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2013.
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Epstein, Barbara Leslie. The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
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Shner-Nishmit, Sarah. The 51st Brigade: The History of the Jewish Partisan Group from the Slonim Ghetto. Translated by Judith Levi. New York: JewishGen in cooperation with the Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC, 2015.
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Tec, Nechama. Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Bulgaria
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Chary, Frederick B. The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972.
Hungary
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Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide the Holocaust in Hungary (Condensed Edition). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
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Cesarani, David. Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944. Oxford; New York: Berg, 1997.
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Cole, Tim. Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto. New York: Routledge, 2003.
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Cornelius, Deborah S. Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron. 1st ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.
Lithuania
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Senn, Alfred Erich. Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.
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Sutton, Karen. The Massacre of the Jews of Lithuania: Lithuanian Collaboration in the Final Solution, 1941-1944. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2008.
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van Voren, Robert. Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania. New York: Rodopi, 2011.
Poland
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Bender, Sara. The Jews of Białystok during World War II and the Holocaust. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008.
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Davies, Norman, and Antony Polonsky. Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.
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Engelking, Barbara, and Jacek Leociak. The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City. Translated by Emma Harris. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
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Grabowski, Jan. Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.
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Gross, Jan Tomasz. Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.
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Gross, Jan Tomasz. Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz- an Essay in Historical Interpretation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006.
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Gross, Jan Tomasz. Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Gross, Jan Tomasz. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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Gutman, Israel United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
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Horwitz, Gordon J. Ghettostadt: Łódź and the making of a Nazi city. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.
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Kassow, Samuel D. Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
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Kochanski, Halik. Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
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Matthäus, Jürgen, and Jochen Böhler, eds. War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
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Michlic, Joanna B., and Antony Polonsky, eds. The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004.
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Tec, Nechama. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
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Winstone, Martin. The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi Rule in Poland under the General Government. 2015.
Romania
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Ancel, Jean. The History of the Holocaust in Romania. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
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Ancel, Jean. Prelude to mass murder: the pogrom in Iași, Romania, June 29, 1941 and thereafter. Translated by Fern Seckbach. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2013.
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Shapiro, Paul A., ed. The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941-1942: A Documentary History of the Holocaust in Romania's
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Contested Borderlands. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2015.
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Wiesel, Elie, Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu, and L. Benjamin, eds. Final Report of the International
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Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Bucharest: International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, 2004.
Ukraine
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Bartov, Omer. Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.
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Berkhoff, Karel C. Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004.
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Brandon, Ray, and Wendy Lower, eds. The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
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Burds, Jeffrey. Holocaust in Rovno: A Massacre in Ukraine, November 1941. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
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Lower, Wendy. Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
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Mick, Christoph. Lemberg, Lwów, L'viv, 1914-1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2016.
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Redlich, Shimon. Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
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Vysotsky, A.F., A.L. Kopylenko, F.A. Lopushansky, and V.V. Sokolov, eds. Nazi Crimes in Ukraine, 1941-1944: Documents and Materials. Kiev: Naukova Dumka Publishers, 1987.
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Yones, Eliyahu. Smoke in the Sand: The Jews of Lvov in the War Years, 1939-1944. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2004.