Holocaust studies receive book prize
A university academic has been awarded an international book prize for his work about Jewish child forced labourers.
Professor Johannes-Dieter Steinert from Wolverhampton University has been awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research 2020.
The Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research is an annual award by Yad Vashem in recognition of high scholarly research and writing on the Holocaust, its precursors and aftermath.
Yad Vashem is the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, which was established in 1953 by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), to commemorate, document, research and educate about the Holocaust.
Professor Steinert’s winning book is "Holocaust und Zwangsarbeit. Erinnerungen jüdischer Kinder 1938-1945’ (Holocaust and forced labour. Memories of Jewish child forced labourers).
He said: "My interest to look into Jewish child forced labour during the Holocaust came from working on a previous research project on humanitarian assistance for survivors of the Holocaust and the German forced labour system.
"The contemporary reports about unaccompanied children in the displaced persons camps intrigued me to learn more about the fate of these children.
"The total number of Jewish child forced labourers is unknown; the statistics do not exist. Estimates depend on the definition of childhood as well as on the definition of forced labour."
Reports showed that Jewish children worked in all branches of industry, including mining, agriculture, and construction work.
They were forced to build production plants, bridges, roads and railway tracks, barracks, airfields, defensive positions, and trenches.
Professor Steinert’s book is based on a research project that was supported by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, Future”, and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.
During the research project, more than 1,000 survivors’ testimonies were analysed and 500 of those have been quoted in the book.
The Prize will be presented on 10 December in a virtual ceremony due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
