YEAR 2027

Numbers and Estimates in Holocaust Research: Limitations, Risks, and Prospects

Debates surrounding the Holocaust frequently involve disputes over estimates and numerical data such as, among others, the victims of concentration and extermination camps, the Jedwabne massacre, the number of Poles who denounced and murdered Jews, or conversely, those who rescued them and faced punishment as a consequence. As these issues have become deeply politicized, a cognitive dissonance has emerged: on the one hand, claims have circulated about millions of Poles involved in aiding Jews; on the other, approximately 200,000 or more Poles have been implicated in their mass murder—with each position invoking analyses and source-based data. Quantitative research aimed at verifying estimates found in both the scholarship and public discourse, and, above all, at providing data that may serve as a basis for new hypotheses, is characterized by numerous limitations. These include gaps in the source material and, at times, its limited reliability or accidental character. Moreover, numbers alone cannot explain the phenomena under examination and must be supplemented by qualitative research. In both cases, a critical approach to the sources is essential as is the setting aside of emotions, the development and application of appropriate research methods, and the creation of a space for academic debate. (read more ...)

Manuscript submission timeline and procedure

May 15, 2026 – deadline for submitting article proposals, which should contain:

• an overview of the article, including the title, main theses, methodology, and sources; up to 1,800 characters
• a short biographical note about the author with information about his/her academic career, current affiliation, research interests and achievements, and a list of significant publications

The article proposal should be sent by email to the editorial board: redakcja@holocaustresearch.pl 

May 30, 2026 – deadline for the editorial board’s final decisions regarding the acceptance of proposals and commissioning of articles

January 2, 2027 – deadline for submitting manuscripts through the journal’s online submission system at: https://zagladazydow.pl/index.php/zz/about/submissions

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YEAR 2026

Connecting scholarly reflection on the Holocaust to the present - new sources and technologies in research

The past decade has seen a breakthrough in Holocaust research, both in terms of the availability of archival sources and the digital tools used to analyze source material. Digitization, the creation of digital repositories, and the integration of archival descriptions and metadata have not only expanded the availability of resources for researchers, but have also opened up new topics and research opportunities. (see more ...)

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YEAR 2025

The Holocaust and Contemporary Issues

The central theme of the 21st issue of the yearbook "The Holocaust Studies and Materials" will be the broadly understood connections between scholarly reflection on the Holocaust and contemporary issues. We are interested in this topic in three ways (see more ...)

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YEAR 2024

Holocaust and Psychology

The twentieth issue of our journal will be a jubilee one. Hence, it shall include summaries, overviews, and attempts to look at selected issues from the perspective of the 20 years. Nevertheless, its main theme shall be the HOLOCAUST and PSYCHOLOGY. (see more ...)

Janusz Korczak wrote the following in his diary: “I feel content and discontent. I become angry, happy, anxious, indignant, I am eager to experience and to avoid experience, I am understanding but I call for punishment by God or man. [...] But all this is theoretical. Made to order. Flat, drab, customary, professional; I perceive things as if through a fog, with blotched, non-dimensional emotions. They seem to be beside me, not inside me. [...] Indolence. Poverty of feeling [...]. “He already knows he must die. And what next?” “Surely you cannot die more than once...?” (see more ...)

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YEAR 2023

Reckoning in the first years after the Holocaust: justice, revenge, memory

The central theme of Volume 19 (2023) will be the post-war SEARCH FOR JUSTICE, emphasizing the period 1944–1949. The group of sources proposed for research consists of the files of prosecution investigations, trials of Nazi criminals and collaborators, social courts, and files of civil courts that adjudicated property matters. Researchers have used these materials for many years but still do not exhaust their potential and enormous size (see more ...)

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YEAR 2022

Fleeing the Holocaust

We wish to devote Holocaust. Studies and Materials 18 (2022) to FLIGHTS. We are interested in flights not only in the literal but also metaphorical sense. The former instance consisted of a Jew spontaneously leaving the place he was staying in or the endangered area or his pursuing a well-thought-out and meticulously prepared strategy of survival. (see more ...)

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YEAR 2021

The Holocaust in Public Space: Articulations, Abuses, Interceptions

We wish to devote volume 17 of the Holocaust. Studies and Materials annual (2021) to various forms of the Holocaust’s presence in public space. What we mean is not only the Holocaust history or ways of its commemoration, but also its ideologization and instrumentalization for political purposes, as well as broadly-defined representations of the Holocaust experience in art, film, and literature, the exhibition strategies in museums and commemorative practices in public space, and, last but not least, the Holocaust’s presence in the new media, chiefly on the Internet (both educational websites, websites of official research or museum institutions, social media, and initiatives undertaken by private individuals and social organizations). Thus the editorial staff returns to the issues which constituted the core of volume 6 (2010), though in an different and expanded form. By doing this we wish to understand the reasons for the severing of the historical continuity in the comprehension of the Holocaust (as a past event of a specified structure) and its transformation into individual currently updated memory facts appropriated and taken over by individuals and entire communities (see more ...)