Probing the Limits of Categorization. The 'Bystander' in Holocaust History

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Probing the Limits of Categorization. The 'Bystander' in Holocaust History

Veranstalter
Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam, in cooperation with Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien/Institute für Zeitgeschichte München, Jena Center 20th Century History and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, supported by the Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and DAAD
Veranstaltungsort
Ort
Amsterdam
Land
Netherlands
Vom - Bis
24.09.2015 - 26.09.2015
Website
http://duitslandinstituut.nl/the-abystandera-in-holocaust-history
Von
Christina Morina and Krijn Thijs

Among the three categories used to analyze the role of individuals in the Holocaust, the ‘bystander’ is the broadest and vaguest. According to, Raul Hilberg, who coined the term, it refers to all those who were ‘once a part of this history.’ Generations of Holocaust scholars have used Hilberg’s triangulation or variations thereof to analyze, systematize and narrate the wealth of historical experiences under Nazi rule. Whereas it seems relatively easy to define who belonged to the category of perpetrator and victim, analyzing the thoughts and actions of the other contemporaries remains a challenging task for international historiography.

In recent years, increasingly sophisticated studies have introduced various intermediate categories and concepts referring to 'onlookers', 'auxiliaries', 'accomplices', 'Mitläufer', 'ordinary people' or 'profiteers' to describe the various attitudes and actions of contemporaries during the persecution of Jews and other minorities in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. The figure of the ‘Bystander’ was attested with different connotations, faces and responsibilities in different national memory communities.

Yet, a sense has emerged that the conventional triangular categorization, even in its most refined versions, has certain limitations. A close look at the daily experiences and interactions of those who can be seen neither as perpetrators nor as victims of systematic persecution reveals that these peoples' thoughts and actions, attitudes and decisions cannot be categorized and pinpointed easily. Without deploying basic theoretical concepts and analytical categories, however, it seems impossible to grasp the Holocaust as a complex social process. They are needed to analyze and explain the ensuing dynamics of segregation, disintegration, and brutalization on the one hand, as well as continuities in 'ordinary' peoples' lives, and perhaps even the persistence and growth of new forms of social cohesion, on the other.

The aim of the conference is to thoroughly review and to think beyond the existing scholarly approaches to the stereotypical ‘bystander’ in Holocaust history. It is intended to encourage the formulation of innovative concepts, which might enable historians to consider hitherto overlooked or marginalized aspects of historical reality or to view familiar processes from entirely new angles.

Programm

Thursday, September 24, 2015
Location: Doelenzaal, University of Amsterdam, Singel 425

13:30 Registration

14:00 Welcome and Introduction

Krijn Thijs/Christina Morina (Amsterdam)
Frank Bajohr (Munich)

15:00-17:00 plenary session:

Panel 1:
Concept History: Genesis of an Elusive Category

René Schlott (Potsdam): Raul Hilberg and the ‘Discovery’ of Bystanders in Holocaust Historiography

Jan Grabowski (Ottawa/Warsaw): The Bystanders/Sasiedzi in Poland since 1939

Ido De Haan (Utrecht): From Victim to Perpetrator. The Changing Image of the Bystander in the Memory of the Holocaust in the Netherlands

Commentary: Norbert Frei (Jena)
Chair: Krijn Thijs (Amsterdam)

17:00-17:30 Refreshments

17:30-18:30 Keynote Lecture:
Mary Fulbrook (London): Bystanders: Catchall Concept, Alluring Alibi or Crucial Clue?
Introduction: Frank Bajohr (Munich)

18:30-19:30 Buffet

20:00-22:00 Public Film & Discussion Event:

Guilt, Heroism, and a Great Deal of Seductive Normality: Nazi Bystanders as Cultural Icons in Film and Television
Nicole Colin (Aix-en-Provence)/ Wulf Kansteiner (Aarhus)

Language: German and English
Location: Cinema Tuschinski, Reguliersbreestraat 26-34, Amsterdam

Friday, September 25, 2015
Location: Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam

9:00-11:00 parallel sessions

Panel 2:
The 'Bystander' avant la lettre: Categorizations and Narrations in the Early Postwar Years

Natalia Aleksiun (New York): Before By-Standers: Early Jewish Conceptualizations of Local Collaboration and Rescue

Nadège Ragaru (Paris): ‘He is not an Antisemite’: Early Attempts at Assessing Responsibilities for Anti-Jewish Persecutions in the Bulgarian People’s Court (1944-1945)

Peter Romijn (Amsterdam): Dutch Local Authorities as Bystanders?

Commentary: Ismee Tames (Amsterdam)
Chair: Ilse Raaijmakers (Utrecht)

Panel 3:
Social Dynamics I: Societal Processes of Exclusion and Disintegration

Bart van der Boom (Leiden): Indifferent Dutch and Valiant Danes. The Dangers of Teleology

Adam R. Seipp (College Station, Texas): ‘What Have you Done to these People?’ Bystanders in the End Phase of the Holocaust

Dieter Pohl (Klagenfurt): Putting the By-Stander in Context: Public Spheres under Occupation and the Holocaust

Commentary: Frank Bajohr (Munich)
Chair: Moritz Föllmer (Amsterdam)

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:30 parallel sessions

Panel 4:
Depictions: Visual Evidence of and by Bystanders

Christoph Kreutzmüller (Berlin): Photographing Bystanders

Petra Bopp (Hamburg/Jena): The Figure of the Bystander between Onlooker, Spectator and Accomplice in Photographs of Wehrmacht Soldiers

Roma Sendyka (Krakow): Bystanders as Visual Subjects: Spectators, Observers, Onlookers?

Commentary: Andrea Löw (Munich)
Chair: Bas von Benda-Beckmann (Amsterdam)

Panel 5:
Reflections: The Bystander through the Victim’s Eyes during and after the Holocaust

Aránzazu Calderón Puerta (Warsaw): The Bystander Category in Victims’ Narratives. The Example of Ida Fink’s Short Stories

Jacques Sémelin (Paris): The French Paradox: Is the Bystander Category Useful to Explain why 75% of the Jews Survived in this Country?

Merel Leeman (Amsterdam): Transatlantic Reinventions of the Bystander. The Autobiographies of three Jewish German-American Historians: George Mosse, Peter Gay and Fritz Stern

Commentary: Dienke Hondius (Amsterdam)
Chair: Barbara Henkes (Groningen)

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:30 parallel sessions

Panel 6:
Attitudes and Agency: Shades of Bystanding Behavior

Remco Ensel (Nijmegen)/Evelien Gans (Amsterdam): The Bystander as a Non-Jew

Bożena Keff (Warsaw): Guardians of Fatum

Adam Knowles (Drexel): Standing by on “The Invisible Front of the Secret Spiritual Germany”. Martin Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism in the Schwarze Hefte

Commentary: Bob Moore (Sheffield)
Chair: Maurits Hortensius (Amsterdam)

Panel 7:
Social Dynamics II: Interactions and Relations in Local Communities

Agnieszka W. Wierzcholska (Berlin): Tarnow, 1939-45: Social Practices and Norms. The Value of Micro-Historical Studies

Hana Kubátová (Prague): Were There ‘Bystanders’ in Topolcany? Concept Formation and Stretching

Guus Meershoek (Enschede): Recognition, Fear, Denial, Shame, Antisemitism. Responses by Amsterdam Citizens to the Genocide of the Jews 1938-1943

Commentary: Katja Happe (Freiburg)
Chair: Bas Kromhout (Amsterdam)

16:30-17:00 Coffee Break

17:00-19:00 plenary session

Panel 8:
Cultures of Violence: Presence, Participation, Incrimination

Susanne C. Knittel (Utrecht): Stand by Your Man: Women in the SS-Sippengemeinschaft

Elżbieta Janicka (Warsaw): Participating Observers? The German Project and the Local Contexts in Occupied Poland

Paul Moore (Leicester): Sensing Nazi Terror: Sensory Bystanding and the Volksgemeinschaft, 1933-1945

Commentary: Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Wuppertal/ Essen)
Chair: Nicole Immler (Utrecht)

Saturday, September 26, 2015
Location: Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam

9:00 -11:00 parallel sessions

Panel 9:
Representations: Bystanders in Film and Museum

Hilla Lavie (Jerusalem): Cinematic Representation of Collective Active-Bystanding in Verhoeven's ‘Human Failure’

Aleksandra Szczepan (Krakow): The Power of Reenactment: Bystanders Performing the Past

Susan Bachrach (Washington, DC): Uses of the Concept and Term ‘Bystander’ in Exhibitions at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1993-2015

Commentary: Jan Grabowski (Ottawa/Warsaw)
Chair: Hanco Jürgens (Amsterdam)

Panel 10:
Adaptions: In Search of New Categories

Timothy Williams (Marburg): 'I am not, what I am.' Thinking Beyond Perpetrators, Bystanders, Rescuers – A Typology of Action Roles in Genocide

Froukje Demant (Amsterdam): Understanding Bystander Behavior as Social System

Fabian van Samang (Brussels): The Bystander as a Philosophical and Discursive Entity

Commentary: Mary Fulbrook (London)
Chair: Katja Happe (Freiburg)

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-13:30 plenary session

The Holocaust and other Genocides: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives on Social Violence and Human Agency

Final Panel Discussion with:
Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Wuppertal/Essen)
Ido De Haan (Utrecht)
Wulf Kansteiner (Aarhus)
Jacques Sémelin (Paris)

Moderators:
Christina Morina/Krijn Thijs (Amsterdam)

13:30 Lunch (to go)

14:00 End of conference

Please note that there is a limited number of places available. You can register by sending an e-mail to: aanmeldingen-dia@uva.nl (subject: Bystander conference).
Please note that registration does not guarantee a place. We will inform you if you are on the participant list. Preference will be given to applicants with a stated academic interest in the subject. For further information, please contact the organizers at: bystander-dia@uva.nl.

Organizational Team
Dr. Christina Morina (Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam)
Dr. Krijn Thijs (Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam)
Dr. Froukje Demant (Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam)
Dr. Katja Happe (Universität Freiburg)

http://duitslandinstituut.nl/the-abystandera-in-holocaust-history

Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Prins Hendrikkade 189b
1011 TD Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.duitslandinstituut.nl

Kontakt

Dr. Christina Morina and Dr. Krijn Thijs

Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam
Universiteit van Amsterdam

bystander-dia@uva.nl

http://duitslandinstituut.nl/the-abystandera-in-holocaust-history
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