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"An Extraordinary Contribution to Holocaust Research" - Sir Martin Gilbert

The First Attempt to Map the Holocaust -- Mapping the Implementation of the Final Solution.

Map number four from Edward Kossoy's exceptional four-map series of the geography of the Holocaust. Kossoy's works being the first attempt to comprehensively map the Holocaust.

The sheet is composed of a large map of Southeastern Europe and an inset map of Italy.  The primary focus of the map is to illustrate the prosecution of the "Final Solution" whereby smaller camps and ghettos throughout Eastern Europe were closed and their prisoners transferred to the large-scale extermination camps of Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. 

The map covers an area from which the majority of the victims were sent to Auschwitz.  It charts the number of people transferred and the dates of the transfers.  Most of the transfers are of thousands or tens of thousands of people and occurred throughout 1944.

The inset map shows the concentration and transit camps throughout Italy, including Ferramonti di Tarsia, which is specifically labeled a Jewish camp.

Edward Kossoy

Edward Kossoy was a Polish lawyer, Irgun fighter, and advocate for victims of Nazism. Kossoy's family and life in Poland were utterly destroyed by the machinations of Nazi Germany and the USSR; after fleeing the German invasion of Poland, Kossoy was arrested by a Soviet militia and eventually charged by the NKVD with espionage and counter-revolutionary activities. He was imprisoned in a gulag until 1941 when he was freed by the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement. He evacuated the Soviet Union with the Anders Army to Tehran. His father, wife, and daughter were murdered by Nazi forces.

By 1944, Kossoy was in the British Mandate of Palestine, and soon he was active in Irgun and the Israeli War of Independence.  He left Israel for Europe in 1954, where he earned his Ph.D. in law and political science. He then settled in Munich and began on his lifework, writing about the Holocaust and representing 60,000 of its victims.

Kossory died in 2012, in Switzerland at the age of 99.

Sir Martin Gilbert, author of the Atlas of the Holocaust, wrote of the importance of Kossoy's maps in starting him on his project:

In 1958, in Munich, an extraordinary contribution to Holocaust research was completed by Edward Kossoy. It consisted of only three pages: three single-sheet maps. The first showed the deportation routes with dates and numbers, from Austria, Slovakia, Bukovina, Ruthenia, Transylvania, Banat, Bacska, and Serbia, with an inset map showing concentration camps, labour camps, and internment camps in Italy. The second sheet showed concentration camps and labour camps throughout Poland, with inset maps showing camps in France, Transnistria, North Africa, Upper Silesia, and the Warsaw region. The third sheet showed concentration camps, slave labour camps, and 11 deportation routes, with dates and numbers, in the General-Government, the Baltic States, Upper Silesia, Danzig West-Prussia, East Prussia, and the Wartheland.

These three single-sheet maps were the first publications to show the scale of the deportations and the concentration and labour camp system. Kossoy’s work inspired me twenty years later as I began work on my 316-map Atlas of the Holocaust. Kossoy also published in 1958 a handbook which included camp tattoo numbers and the regional origin of the deportees to Auschwitz, a list of displaced persons camps after 1945, and the date of the Jewish holy days during the war: this latter a crucial guide, as so many survivors date an event by its fast or festival: for example Purim 1941, Passover 1942, the Day of Atonement 1943, or Hannukah 1944.

While Sir Martin wrote that Kossoy did three maps (we have only three maps), a record in the Archival Collections of the Jewish Family and Children's Services Holocaust Center reports four maps: "Map 1: Polanen, Frank.., Nord Africa; Map 2: MittelEuropa; Map 3: Polen and Balticum; Map 4: Donaurum and Italia."

Rarity

Rare. We have located no copies of Kossoy's maps at auction nor in dealer catalogs and only one set in a library collections, at the Bavarian State Library (OCLC 162252975), and one at the Jewish Family and Children's Services Holocaust Center.

Conclusion

Kossoy's self-published map is a font of information about the Holocaust and the practical networks through which it was prosecuted.  The Holocaust was addressed again cartographically in Sir Martin Gilbert's Atlas in its various editions, but to this day, Kossoy's map series stands as an unparalleled accomplishment and an indispensable resource for the history of the 20th century.

Appendix: Translation of Key

• Grenzen von Ungarn am 1.6.1941 | Borders of Hungary on 1.6.1941
• Politische Grenzen nach dem 31.12.1937 | Political borders after 31.12.1937
• Politische Grenzen vor dem 31.12.1937 | Political borders before 31.12.1937
• Frontverlaufe | Frontline
• Vernichtungslager | Extermination camp
• Konzentrationslager | Construction camp
• Zwangsarbeitslager | Forced labor camp
• Durchgangslager | Transit camp
• Sammellager | Collection camp
• ZAL in Szolnok ab 1.9.1942 - Jüdische Bevölkerung von Szolnok und Umgebung in der Zeitvom 16. - 20.4.1944 in Sammellager abgesondert. | ZAL in Szolnok from 1.9.1942 - Jewish population of Szolnok and surroundings in the period from 16.-20.4.1944 segregated in collection camp.
• Am 25.5.1944 2,567 Juden von Szolnok nach Strasshof deportiert. |  On 25.5.1944 2,567 Jews deported from Szolnok to Strasshof.
• Am 7.10.1944 murden die Insassen des ZAL - Szolnok nach Budapest deportiert. |  On 7th October 1944 the inmates of ZAL - Szolnok were murdered in Budapest.
• Vom 26. - 28.6.1944 Juden von Szolnok nach Aushwitz deportiert. (Deportationstrasporte nach Auschwitz : rot - andere Deportationstransporte: grün - mobei[?] nur der Bestimmungsort, nicht aber die Richtung und die Zwischen = stationen in allen Fällen angegeben werden konnten. |  From 26. - 28.6.1944 Jews deported from Szolnok to Aushwitz.  (Deportation transports to Auschwitz: red - other deportation transports: green - [?] only the destination, but not the direction and the intermediate stations could be indicated in all cases.
• Massentötungen (im Januar 1942) ca. 1.000 Opfer. |  Mass killings (in January 1942) about 1,000 victims.