[9] However, the figure of 42,500 is a considerable underestimate, because the researchers require multiple witness testimonies and documentary evidence to publish an entry on a site.
[10] The figure of 42,500 was soon picked up as a news story in the German- and English-language media because "new, more, larger—and, of course, Nazis" are "all the elements of a sensational headline", according to Dutch historian Robert Jan Van Pelt.
"[4] Dean commented, "To document this on a map and see how the Holocaust affected every single community throughout Europe makes quite clear the scope of the Nazi regime's murder campaign.
She documents the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system, from 20,000 prisoners in August 1939 to more than 100,000 by the end of 1942, and 715,000 in January 1945, as many as half of whom died before liberation.
[17][18] These essays are the only analysis presented in the volume; most of the content catalogues the camps, including locations, duration of operation, purpose, perpetrators and victims.
[11][15][25] A review by British historian Simone Gigliotti in the German Studies Review found that the encyclopedia is "a highly significant and overdue synthesis of existing documentary studies and specialized knowledge", although she notes it is not the first effort at a comprehensive reference on a Holocaust topic: previous multivolume encyclopedias had been published by Yad Vashem and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
[19] Samuel Kassow praised the bibliographical information in the book, writing that the encyclopedia is "a terrific resource for researchers" that "will stimulate further study".
He reported that some survivors and their descendants had paid full price ($295.00) for the first volume of the encyclopedia because it "stands as a bulwark between their own memory and the denials" and controversies surrounding Holocaust history, by containing basic facts about locations of persecution.
[29] A story in The New York Times noted that the encyclopedia also serves a practical purpose, in helping victims receive compensation for their imprisonment in previously unknown sites.
Benz also accused the USHMM editors of copying his work and claimed that the encyclopedia was not based on original research, unfounded allegations according to Van Pelt.
His criticism was interpreted by Van Pelt and German historian Marc Buggeln as being related to concern that the USHMM encyclopedia, which is more ambitious in scope, would overshadow Benz' work.
[31] Van Pelt and German historian Klaus-Peter Friedrich[9] compare Volume II to The Yad Yashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust,[32] which covers similar territory.
It also covers fewer locations, due to restricting its definition of a ghetto to places where a Jewish community existed before the war.
[33] American historian Waitman Wade Beorn praised the volume for its detailed coverage of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, previously an under-studied topic.
He also commented that the encyclopedia charts the particulars of each victim's death or survival story, something that Beorn characterized as being more of an emphasis in recent scholarship.
Commenting on the large numbers of maps in the volume, he wrote that "the entries can be viewed as extensive collections of metadata for discrete geographical locations", providing the basis for thinking spatially about the Holocaust.