Steinbacher, Sybille 1966–

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Steinbacher, Sybille 1966–

PERSONAL: Born 1966. Education: Ruhr University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Fakultat fur Geschichtswissenshaft, Dekanat GA 5/32, D-44780 Bochum, Germany.

CAREER: Historian, educator, and writer. Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, assistant professor of modern and contemporary history; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, visiting fellow for European studies, 2004–05. Research fellow at Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; research associate of Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Bertelsmann House in the Third Reich.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Dachau, die Stadt und das Konzentrationslager in der NS-Zeit: die Untersuchung einer Nachbarschaft, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1993.

"Musterstadt" Auschwitz: Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien, K.G. Saur (Munich, Germany), 2000.

(Editor with Norbert Frei) Beschweigen und Bekennen: die deutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft und der Holocaust, Wallstein (Göttingen, Germany), 2001.

Auschwitz: Geschichte und Nachgeschichte, Beck (Munich, Germany), 2004, translated by Shaun Whiteside, as Auschwitz: A History, Ecco Press (New York, NY) 2005.

Contributor to Ausbeutung, Vernichtung, Öffentlichkeit: neue Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Lagerpolitik, K.G. Saur (Munich, Germany), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Sybille Steinbacher has written or edited several books on the history of the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. She served as coeditor of Beschweigen und Bekennen: die deutsche Nachkriegsgesellschaft und der Holocaust, a book based on the proceedings of a 2000 symposium that looked at how Germans have reacted to the Holocaust since the end of the war. Kathrin Bower, writing in Shofar, called the book "a compact and compelling study of responses to the Holocaust in Germany that provides an excellent introduction for non-specialists."

Steinbacher is also the author of Auschwitz: A History. In this title, she looks back on the history of the city of Auschwitz prior to World War II through its notoriety as the home of the most prominent concentration camp in Germany during the war. Steinbacher recounts how Auschwitz was long a center for Jewish culture prior to the 1930s, and then describes how the camp established there grew from an earlier prison camp during World War I. She also details the camp's evolution during the war from a Polish prisoner-of-war facility to an extermination site for Jews. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that the author "carefully depicts the alternate universe of Auschwitz, entering into the lives and the deaths of its inhabitants." Jim Doyle, writing in the Library Journal, commented that "this dispassionate but poignant study is a worthy addition to any public or academic library." A contributor to Contemporary Review wrote that the effort is "a devastating account." Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a reviewer described the book as "a thoughtful overview of a place terrible to remember—and one that must always be remembered."