Stimmen zum Buch

Bertrand Perz, H-Soz-Kult, 19.10.2023

Bei dem vorliegenden Sammelband [handelt es sich] um einen wichtigen Input für die Lagerforschung […], der vor allem auch zeigt, welches Potential in einer theoriegeleiteten, Disziplingrenzen überschreitenden Herangehensweise steckt. Der Band wird sicher nicht der letzte in diesem dynamischen Forschungsfeld sein, aber künftige Publikationen zum Thema werden sich an den Standards, die darin gesetzt sind, messen lassen müssen.

Matthew Stibbe, Journal of Contemporary History, 59(4), 773–775, 2024

All the case studies in this volume are worth reading in their own right. Collectively, they illustrate the alarming point made on the opening page that camps are not just a phenomenon of the twentieth century but are part of the present and future. When it comes to explaining camps as systems of inclusion and exclusion, the editors are right to argue that emphasis on ›function‹ alone privileges nation-state, colonial and elite perspectives over local and micro-level processes. Overall, they are to be congratulated on achieving a very challenging task, namely to make the case for the comparability of camps as institutional phenomena while giving due acknowledgement to the unprecedented scale and sheer horror of the Nazi death camps of the Second World War era, the Soviet gulags in the Stalin period and the killing fields of late 1970s Cambodia.