Survivors of Nazi Persecution: Introduction

In the introduction, the editors survey recent developments in Holocaust historiography and situate the Beyond Camps and Forced Labour conference in this context. As well as surveying the field in general, the introduction provides an overview of the book’s chapters and shows that what unifies the book as a whole is an emphasis on the experiences and agency of individuals. For the most part focusing on victims of Nazi persecution in the aftermath of the Second World War, the book shows that individuals acted in ways that sought to make sense of circumstances that were not of their own making.