07 July 2014
Today, Monday, July 7, 2014 the International Institute for Holocaust Research of Yad Vashem begins its 7th annual summer workshop for Holocaust scholars. The scholarly international workshop, which concludes on Thursday, July 10, explores in depth various aspects of the many deportations of Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and will include presentations, lectures and discussions by leading experts from Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel and the United States. The workshop is made possible by the generous support of the Gutwirth Family Fund.
The theme of the week-long workshop this year, entitled: “Transport: The Deportation of the Jews During the Nazi Period” will also discuss Yad Vashem's online research project, exhibition and database entitled "Transports to Extinction" which provides an overview of all aspects of the transports, while focusing on four main issues: reconstruction of the transport's route, information on persons involved in organizing the transport, information about the Jewish deportees and recollections of the survivors of the transports. Since 2007 the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem has been studying the transports as an extensive phenomenon that transcended individual states, rather than in the context of a study of the Holocaust in a specific country or a single community. The transports are seen as significant in its own right and not as merely a technical stage during which Jews were transported from one place to another. Indeed, the transports played a considerable role in translating the grim theory of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” into reality. The online research project is made possible by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the estate of Isaac Jacques Cohen of France, survivor from Thessaloniki and SNCF - Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français.
