March 3



USA:

University Press to publish books covering Holocaust


The University of Nebraska Press was chosen to be a part of a publishing
project that will extensively cover the Holocaust.

Many schools throughout the United States were considered for the
project, titled "Comprehensive History of the Holocaust," but in the end
Nebraska was chosen, said Alan Steinweis, associate professor of history
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor of the English publication.

"Something many people on campus don't realize is that we have a truly
outstanding university press here," Steinweis said.

"It's really one of the best university presses in the United States and
one of the strongest units at the university," he said.

"It's also a press that previously had done a lot of important publishing
work in the field of Jewish studies and Holocaust studies, so we already
had a well-established reputation in this area of publication."

The series will consist of 15 to 20 scholarly books on Germany's attempt
to eliminate European Jews. The books will be published over the next 10
to 15 years in English, Hebrew and other languages.

As a publishing partner in the United States, the university press will
be coordinating the reviews, revisions and publication schedules, said
Gary Dunham, editor-in-chief of the university press.

Steinweis said the Holocaust was a subject that has great interest on the
UNL campus because classes offered on the Holocaust are in high demand
and have strong enrollments.

The books will be written by an international team of historians,
consisting of Americans, Israelis and Germans. The information being used
is found in materials located in libraries and archives throughout Europe
and North America.

Research for the books will be carried out by a number of authors who are
distributed over several continents, Steinweis said.

The organization of the series will be geographical, rather than
chronological. Instead of on a year-by-year analysis, it will be
introduced country-by-country, he said.

"The series is not designed to be a series of best-selling books but
rather designed authoritative scholarly kinds of works," Steinweis said.

The first book, "The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi
Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942" is set to be released in the
spring of 2004 and is written by Christopher Browning, a professor at the
University of North Carolina and a leading historian of the Holocaust in
the world, Dunham said.

"The book ... is the most detailed, careful and comprehensive analysis to
date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of Europe's Jewish population
into mass murder," said Erika Kuebler Rippeteau, publicity manager for
the University of Nebraska Press.

The second book will be released soon after is written by Livia Rothkirchen.

Other authors include Yitzhak Arad, Mosche Mosek, Lilliana Piccotto, Wolf
Gunner, Rene Poznansky and Yoav Gelber.

(source: Daily Nebraskan)