The Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research, in memory of Holocaust survivor Abraham Meir Schwarzbaum, and family members murdered in the Holocaust, has been awarded to Dr. Kim Wünschmann, DAAD Lecturer in Modern European History and Acting Deputy Director of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex, for her book, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps.
The award ceremony will take place on Tuesday at Yad Vashem. The judges said, "What turns the book into a major contribution to Holocaust scholarship are the implications of this special treatment of Jews in the prewar camps for our understanding of the quick acculturation of the German public to the idea that the Jewish neighbor was an enemy to be extirpated, first from civil society and ultimately from the world."