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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Laurien Vastenhout, "Between Community and Collaboration: 'Jewish Councils' in Western Europe under Nazi Occupation" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Description: The first comprehensive, comparative study of the 'Jewish Councils' in the Netherlands, Belgium and France during Nazi rule. In the postwar period, there was extensive focus on these organisations' controversial role as facilitators of the Holocaust. They were seen as instruments of Nazi oppression, aiding the process of isolating and deporting the Jews they were ostensibly representing. As a result, they have chiefly been remembered as forms of collaboration. Using a wide range of sources including personal testimonies, diaries, administrative documents and trial records, Laurien Vastenhout demonstrates that the nature of the Nazi regime, and its outlook o...