Holocaust Lists and Inventories: Recording Death vs. Traces of Lived Lives

Lists and inventories permeated the experience of Jews who fell victim to the Holocaust, as well as that of those they left behind. The National Socialist and Vichy regimes were obsessive about both lists of Jews and inventories of their property. In the years and decades following the war, survivors and their heirs seeking restitution of their goods or reparations for their loss encountered entangled bureaucracies, each requiring their own form and rhetoric of inventory. This article explicates the work lists and inventories did for both oppressors and victims, as well as the rich insights they offer historians.