THE NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS: A TEACHING AND LEARNING RESOURCE
Imogen Dalziel
In 2015, Nikolaus Wachsmann, Professor of Modern European History at Birbeck College, University of London, published his monograph KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (Little, Brown). The book has since been translated into Polish, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Described by reviewers as “groundbreaking” (The New Yorker), “outstanding” (Financial Times) and “profoundly important” (Mail on Sunday), the book has won the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize (Colombia University/Harvard) and the Wolfson History Prize.
Following this book’s publication – and with a desire to better integrate academic and public understanding of the camps' history – Professor Wachsmann created the free-to-use website 'The Nazi Concentration Camps: A Teaching and Learning Resource'. The site is hosted by Birkbeck and was developed with input from secondary school teachers in England. The website was officially launched at a panel event in London in November 2016, and has continued to garner attention since, with Professor Wachsmann delivering a series of talks on the topic to teachers in the UK and the US.