The only European periodical devoted to the history of the destruction of the Jews of Europe, and the first history journal on the subject, this publication is essential for any student or researcher working on this gap in history. It intends to give an overview of the current projects in the historiography of Judeocide.
The Revue d'histoire de la Shoah also opens its field of study to other tragedies of the century: the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, that of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire and the massacre of the Gypsies.
The RHS is accessible online for free on Cairn.info for issues published between 2005 and 2022
(Review of the History of the Shoah, no. 223, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2026)
Directed by Deborah Barton and Fabien Theofilakis with
The
The issue clarifies the interrelationships between actors and puts into perspective the construction of identities, from the point of view of victims as well as their persecutors and
Through the demographic and geographical dimensions, this volume explores different topics related to this issue and is organized around three themes: deportation and occupation; the experience of the camps; post-war, between justice and memory.
(History of the Shoah Journal, no. 222, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, October 2025)
under the direction of Ania Szczepanska
With the notion of plunder (and return) has been raised for decades the question of objects in the Shoah, focused on works of art and valuable movable property (paintings, musical instruments, furniture, etc.).
But what about the other material traces, objects considered as "worthless"? Objects "of everyday life"? Personal effects?
This issue seeks to define these humble objects, to identify their specific characteristics and to place them in a multidisciplinary reflection: how archaeology, literary or cinematographic studies, art history, law and many other fields of research confront these objects? And how, beyond that, do they provide the keys to their understanding through museums, memorial centers, conservation laboratories, etc.
Traces of "previous" life, testimonies of the war, plunder and deportation, bases for writing history and work of memory, these objects are all that. Addressing them requires a threefold approach: defining the nature, provenance and specific context of these objects; reconstructing their life since the war and their narratives; determining their current use and circulation through the prism of museum collections. It is this reflection, informed by the experience and questioning of specialists from various disciplines, that invites this issue of the Revue d'histoire de la Shoah.
(History of the Shoah Review, no. 221, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2025)
under the direction of Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Audrey Kichelewski
While the pervasiveness of frontal negationism of the genocide of the Jewry of Europe seems to have diminished in recent years, new forms of falsification, more blurred, more diverse, and even harder to describe, are emerging across Europe and the world. The terminology designating these discourses is itself uncertain: revisionism, deviations, utilitarianism, trivialization, etc.? The English expression Holocaust distortion ("deformation" of the Shoah) is gaining popularity and broadly describes the negation of national responsibilities in the Shoah: from Poland to Bulgaria, from Ukraine to the United States, even in France, examples are multiplying, with so many political particularities.
If in some countries, these distortions are carried by a fringe of the academic world, these new negationism are largely the result of personalities and political parties from the radical right, from Benjamin Netanyahu to Marine Le Pen, from Viktor Orban to the PIS. Moreover, the Internet and social networks amplify these discourses and blur the distinction between a politicized public history and a critical history of sources. This issue analyses in detail these new forms of historical narratives in several countries, including the United States and Israel – and describes these same strategies for distorting the history and memory of the Armenian and Tutsi genocide.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 220, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, October 2024)
under the direction of Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Audrey Kichelewski
This issue of the Revue d'histoire de la Shoah brings together articles that address various themes. The more open than usual approach proposed by this issue is intended to respond to the curiosity of readers and show the liveliness of current work on the Holocaust.
These studies mainly focus on France and question for the first time the role of major French institutions in the persecution of the Jews (the Palace of Versailles, the Palais de Tokyo, the Red Cross), but also the prism of the distance between Paris and the provinces (the city of Bordeaux and the department of Cher).
The destruction of the Jews, the different faces of spoliation, the failure of some and the greed of others... , all these subjects emerge through particular cases as well as in their collective dimension.
Their nationality, their experience and their background, their fields of study and their institutions of affiliation allow historians and art historians who sign these texts to highlight both the French and European dimension of this research in perpetual movement.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 219, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2024)
under the direction of Blandine Landau and Atinati Mamatsashvilii
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a territory little explored by research on the Shoah, is a country whose status during the Second World War and its relationship with the Jewish minority are very particular. At the crossroads of France, Belgium and Germany, nearly five thousand Jews lived there before the German invasion of May 10, 1940 and less than a thousand returned after the war.
Refuge for many exiles from Germany and Austria during the 1930s, the country was invaded on 10 May 1940. On 2 August, a civil administration was set up under the authority of Gauleiter Gustav Simon, in order to prepare for the annexation of the territory to the Reich. In order to attract the support of the population, Simon ensures the promotion of the Volksgemeinschaft and the exclusion of other populations, starting with Jews. These are pushed out or deported, their property confiscated and aryanized. In June 1943, the seventh and last deportation convoy left Luxembourg-city. In the aftermath of the war, while the memory of the genocide was being built throughout Europe, nothing was done in Luxembourg where no public monument evoked the persecution of the Jews. The turning point of 2015 and the apology made by the state to the Jewish community give a new impetus to this aspect.
This issue explores the complex workings of these multiple processes, rigorously organized by the Nazi administrative machine. In the light of the latest research, the modalities of exclusion and dispossession appear, the structures of concentration of the Jewish population and its deportation, as well as the difficult return of survivors and the development of a memorial policy.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 218, published by Mémorial de la Shoah, October 2023)
Under the direction of Nina Valbousquet
At a time when a major archival project is beginning with the Vatican archives for the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958), the
On 4 March 2019, Pope Francis announced the declassification of the Vatican archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XII by affirming his "confidence" in "serious and objective historical research". A year later, on March 2, 2020, the Vatican effectively makes these unpublished documents available to the scientific public: a historic opening due to the breadth of the documentary resources and the exceptional nature of the archival process, but also because it is a disputed pontificate and a period of great political and religious changes, from the outbreak of World War II to the beginnings of the Second Vatican Council.
Old polemics (about the Vatican’s attitude to the persecution of the Jews and to Nazism) were immediately revived. These memorial debates and this polarized history, between condemnation and apology, go partly back to the controversies of the 1960s around the German play by Rolf Hochhuth
This vast subject has often been approached from a theological and moral point of view. But the present issue also takes into account political, diplomatic, international and humanitarian issues by questioning the capacity for reaction and action of an institution that is both spiritual and temporal, as well as its limits in the face of extreme violence and genocide.
To the question of the silences of the pope is added that of the "dilemmas" of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in a context of crisis: political, diplomatic, humanitarian and theological dilemmas, between charity and neutrality. The complexity of these choices and the motivations that underlie them is now clearer, intertwined with other themes such as humanitarian assistance, the refugee crisis before, during and after the war, relations with fascism and democracy, anti-communism, the protection of former Nazis and fascists in the post-war period, the Vatican’s position on Allied justice, and the immediate memory of the Shoah in the Christian conscience.
Indeed, while the polemics focus on the personality of Pius XII, the new archives and their intersection with other documentary funds make it possible to grasp the diversity of the Catholic world and "the sociological complexity of the Churches".
If the question of the Vatican constitutes the red thread of this dossier, the articles address broader themes and make an inventory of historiographical reflection and research through field surveys and case studies.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 217, éd Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2023)
Under the direction of Ilsen About
During the Second World War, Roma and Sinti were the target of multiple persecutions and genocidal violence whose timing and intensity vary according to the territories of Europe. These persecutions have also concerned Manouches and Gypsies, as well as groups associated by history with the anti-Gypsyism measures and designated by their profession or supposed way of life, such as Yéniches, basket-makers, fairground dwellers, Circassians and travelers.
The often deliberate concealment and belated recognition of these persecutions contributed to the marginalization of facts that led to the physical elimination of more than 200,000 people across Europe and the irreversible dislocation of pre-war Romani societies. Even if many shadows remain, the different chapters of this story now appear very clearly.
This issue of the
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 216, ed. Mémorial de la Shoah, October 2022)
Entitled "New research on the Shoah in Poland", this dossier brings together contributions on innovative approaches, both terms from new sources mobilized and approaches. The sources and stories of Jewish victims and survivors are mobilized in their cross-referencing with official and clandestine documents from the time. The pioneering writings of surviving Holocaust historians, such as Nachman Blumental, director of the Jewish History Institute in Warsaw until 1949, were rediscovered and appreciated for their early clairvoyance.
The micro-historical approach highlights the local diversity of situations, while revealing comparable mechanisms in the persecution and (low) survival of Jews in the most well-known cities (Warsaw, Lodz) or more modest (Tarnow). Taking into account the materiality – that of bodies after gassings in killing centers such as Belzec or Sobibor, but also that of waste accumulated in ghettos – offers additional keys to understanding the daily lives of these hunted men, women, and children, locked up or hidden, and most often destroyed in immense suffering.
Finally, the history of the extermination of the Jews in Poland deserves to be placed back in the long term, allowing us to see not only the rhetorical and actual dynamics of exclusion at work in Poland betweentwo wars but also the very long shadow cast by the Shoah, both after the war and up to today. This issue is all the more essential at a time when distorted discourses about the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust are flourishing in Europe. aimed at challenging the irrefutable and consensual achievements of historical science in favor of a narrative that is more comfortable for societies, but dishonest and capable of legitimizing even the most violent political actions.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 215, ed. Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2022)
Under the direction of Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Judith Lyon-Caen
What has become of the Jewish cemeteries, some recent, others immemorial, in the persecution and the Shoah? Singular peri-urban or rural landscapes, like all Jewish institutions, they were disrupted in Germany from 1933 onwards throughout the war. Suicides and deportations are listed there. Sometimes, they have disappeared and been deconsecrated, while the bodies were transferred to mass graves. Yet most of the Jewish cemeteries in Germany and Europe were not destroyed by the Nazis.
During the war, the Jewish cemetery was a transit space in the heart of the hostile city (like the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, adjacent to the ghetto); it served to gather Jews and give them refuge when all other places were forbidden to them; it was the ultimate repository for the bodies of victims (Jewish or not) to whom any human funeral treatment was denied, resulting in the opening of mass graves; it also offered a setting for executions.
After the Shoah, abandoned cemeteries, deprived of their "natural" deaths, remained places that witnessed the Jewish catastrophe, despite the reburial movements – surviving relatives searching for the bodies of the disappeared to return them to the Jewish cemetery. The absence of tombs is reflected in the construction of thousands of memorials in cemeteries themselves, dedicated to those who died in the camps, in hiding.
A place of reflection, a place to think about the death of those who died in the Shoah, the Jewish cemetery is also the site of the traces of years of persecution, those engraved on the tombstones of premature deaths, those formed by empty spaces, waiting for the dead who never came...
(History of the Shoah Review, no. 214, ed. Shoah Memorial, October 2021)
Under the direction of Audrey Kichelewski and Vanessa Voisin
This new issue of the
The purpose of this dossier is to present the most recent research on the trials of war criminals in Central Europe and the Soviet Union. Less known and often accused of political instrumentalization, these war crimes trials have nevertheless helped to shape the representations of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Their methods and impact therefore make sense: did they take into account, deliberately or incidentally, the description of the fate of the Jews and the singularity of the Holocaust? Their sociocultural, symbolic, memorial and transnational dimensions are here analyzed in the light of the circulations between East and West as well as within the Eastern bloc, but also with regard to the practices and imaginaries of justice.
These crimes, which go beyond border logic and classical criminal categories, even within the context of the Cold War, also invite us to think about these trials, the controversies they have raised and the European judicial systems in their handling of war criminals beyond strictly national frameworks and issues.
Under the direction of Jean-Marc Dreyfus
The spoliation of musical instruments in the Shoah: first research
Under the direction of Claire Andrieu and Jean-Marc Dreyfus
(History of the Shoah Review, no. 213, ed. Shoah Memorial, March 2020)
The Holocaust in the USSR.
Up to 1.3 million Jewish Soviet citizens were murdered during the war. Recent historiography has made considerable advances, describing the great diversity of killing methods, from massacres in pits to gas trucks. To the vision of an organized and methodical genocide carried out by Einsatzgruppen follows that of a multitude of massacres perpetrated by police units and military forces assisted by Ukrainian or Baltic auxiliaries. This new vision is reinforced by the perception of a much broader temporality and spatiality: the killings took place over months, even years, and on an immense territory that has not finished delivering its mass graves.
Plunder and restitution of musical instruments.
The Nazi organizations in charge of looting paid specific attention to musical instruments, both old and prestigious as well as familiar and banal. Because classical music, and especially German music, was at the heart of the staging of the Nazi regime. Within the large organization of looting of cultural goods, a "music kommando" had been created, which gathered the most valuable instruments, but also old scores and musicology treatises, for many very rare. Hundreds of thousands of musical instruments, stolen throughout Europe, were distributed to the German population and to the museums of the Reich. Charged with a strong emotional dimension, these instruments were rarely restored after the Holocaust. This dossier on the dispossession of musical instruments is the very first on this subject and sets out valuable milestones for future research.
(History of the Shoah Review, no. 212, ed. Shoah Memorial, October 2020)
under the direction of Laurent Joly (CNRS)
For its second issue, issued by the new editorial board headed by Audrey Kichelewski and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, RHS – Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, the oldest scientific journal on the subject, bears witness to the vitality and richness of international research on the Shoah.
In 1945, faced with the purge, the leaders of Vichy, Pétain and Laval first, had thus justified their policy against the Jews: Vichy avoided for the Jews of France the fate of the Jews of Poland; its policy was guided by the desire to protect the French Jews, even if it means sacrificing foreign Jews to make a change; and it is thanks to this policy that the majority of Jews have survived in France...
(Review of the history of the Shoah, no. 211, ed. Shoah Memorial, March 2020)
This 211th issue is devoted to all the writings published between 1946 and the mid-1980s. In the four decades after the war, the editors of Le Monde Juif mobilized their national and international networks to publish a wide range of personal writings. These first-person accounts evoked documented aspects of the persecution or extermination of the Jews, far beyond France. Sometimes they came in support of historical records; or they accompanied major commemorative events. Excerpts from books published abroad also appear in the journal: for example, readers come across Jan Karski, Primo Levi or Leib Rochman. But very diverse in style and authors, these personal stories are also often one of the only traces we keep of these witnesses, to whom this issue pays tribute by giving their writings to read.
The subject of this issue is the analysis of the multiple sources that Hitler used to write Mein Kampf, the first volume of which was published in 1925. Where do his main ideas come from? What were the milestones in his ideological formation? What texts did Hitler read in Vienna before 1913 and in Munich after 1919? Which authors, in particular, clearly nourished his thought? Which of them are the major, overestimated or secondary sources of inspiration? If it is well known today that Mein Kampf is in no way an original work and that this text amalgamates, often in a confused way, many ideas spread at the time, we still need to list these influences. Their common denominator is anti-Semitism.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 207, ed. Mémorial de la Shoah, October 2017)
This issue aims to provide a picture of the contribution of philosophers to reflections on the Holocaust, of which it attempts to present various aspects. Although the majority of the philosophers summoned were contemporary with the Third Reich and Nazism, an abyss often separates them. There are those who, from near or far, were victims (Jean Améry, Hannah Arendt), those who "saw nothing" (Paul Ricoeur), those who cheered the Reich and the "destruction of the Jews of Europe" (Heidegger), contributing to make philosophy sink with them.
(Revue d'histoire de la Shoah, no. 206, éd. Mémorial de la Shoah, March 2017)
Despite the racial laws of 1938 and its collaboration with the Reich, fascist Italy did not directly participate in the deportation of Jews from the peninsula until September 1943. Many Italian Jews were protected and, compared to neighboring Yugoslavia, the death toll in Italy was among the lowest in Europe. Today, the memory of the genocide occupies an important place: publications, colloquiums, history centers are multiplying. The Italian visitors to Auschwitz are numerically the third largest group. This second issue of our diptych questions the intricacies of a memory of genocide that has become a question of history.
(No. 205, October 2016)
In partnership with the Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, Israel
Jewish communities scattered from Morocco to Iraq, from Egypt to Yemen, are well informed of the vicissitudes of a European Judaism that was then by far the majority. As soon as the Nazis came to power, they organized with more or less success the boycott of German products, at the risk of cutting themselves off from local authorities and Arab nationalist movements. But this solidarity quickly tests its limits, especially when war breaks out in Europe. For Jewish communities in the Arab world, Nazism and war are a major turning point. In 1945, their future on their native land seems less assured than ever.
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