Virtual Book Launch: In the Shadow of the Holocaust

The Wiener Holocaust Library is delighted to partner with UCL’s Institute of Jewish Studies and the Institute for Polish Jewish Studies to launch Michael Fleming’s new book, In the Shadow of the Holocaust. This event will take place online, but it is possible that limited in-person places will be available closer to the event.

In the midst of the Second World War, the Allies acknowledged Germany’s ongoing programme of extermination. In the Shadow of the Holocaust examines the struggle to attain post-war justice and prosecution. Focusing on Poland’s engagement with the United Nations War Crimes Commission, it analyses the different ways that the Polish Government in Exile (based in London from 1940) agitated for an Allied response to German atrocities. The book shows that jurists associated with the Government in Exile made significant contributions to legal debates on war crimes and, along with others, paid attention to German crimes against Jews. By exploring the relationship between the UNWCC and the Polish War Crimes Office under the authority of the Polish Government in Exile and later, from the summer of 1945, the Polish Government in Warsaw, the book provides a new lens through which to examine the early stages of the Cold War.