The Holocaust in the Borderlands: Interethnic Relations and the Dynamics of Violence in Occupied Eastern Europe

The Holocaust in the Borderlands: Interethnic Relations and the Dynamics of Violence in Occupied Eastern Europe

Veranstalter
Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien am Institut für Zeitgeschichte München - Berlin
Veranstaltungsort
Ort
München
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
07.02.2018 - 09.02.2018
Website
Von
Kerstin Schwenke, Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien, Institut für Zeitgeschichte München - Berlin

The Holocaust, though initiated by the Third Reich, was by nature a transnational phenomenon: the majority of its victims came from outside Nazi Germany, and its bloodiest sites of genocide lay beyond Germany’s borders. During World War II, Europe’s contested multiethnic borderlands in particular saw unprecedented upsurges in violence against Jews, Roma, and other persecuted minorities. From the Baltic States to Transnistria to the Serbian Banat, Axis occupational authorities worked in conjunction with local populations to persecute, dispossess, deport, and murder millions. In this process, occupiers not only relied on pre-existing local ethnic and national movements and conflicts; they also spurred violence, which profoundly redefined notions of national, ethnic, and social belonging.

As recent research has shown, the Second World War, Nazi Germany’s occupational policies, and existing and shifting dynamics of local interethnic relations were crucial to the distinct unfolding of the Holocaust in different borderlands. This workshop sets out to explore this topic further and more systematically. It aims to bring together novel and critical insights on the borderlands of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe and the growing body of research on the dynamics of violence in the wider region. By placing the Shoah into larger contexts of different military occupations and interethnic conflicts during World War II, this workshop seeks to problematize the relationship between state structures and popular mobilization — perspectives "from above" and "from below" — in the unfolding of Holocaust violence.

What was the effect of shifting borders and/or pre-existing loyalties on the dynamics of violence in the borderlands? How did the experience of violence and occupation reshape interethnic relations and other social relationships in these regions? Can patterns of behavior be identified across the borderlands of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe?

Ultimately, this workshop aims at gathering an unprecedented range of regional, transnational, and multiscalar approaches to the Holocaust in Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe in order to create a comparative basis for the study of the Holocaust under different occupational regimes, and explore the potential of a borderland approach to the study of the Holocaust.

Programm

Wednesday, 7 February 2018

18.00-20.30: Opening Lecture (Senatssaal LMU) followed by wine reception
Doris Bergen (Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto): Saving Christianity, Killing Jews: German Religious Campaigns and the Holocaust in the Borderlands
Greetings, introduction and moderation: Frank Bajohr (Munich), Gaëlle Fisher (Munich), Caroline Mezger (Munich) and Kim Wünschmann (Munich).

Thursday, 8 February 2018

9.00-9.30: Welcome & Introduction
Gaëlle Fisher and Caroline Mezger: The Holocaust in the Borderlands: Introductory Remarks

9.30 – 10.00: I – Contexts of Social Division in Multiethnic Societies
Chair: Kim Wünschmann (Munich)
How did pre-existing social divisions in multiethnic societies influence later dynamics of violence under occupation?
- Grzegorz Krzywiec (Warsaw): 'Borderlands' (Kresy) as a Laboratory for Space without the Others? Eastern Europe, Multi-Ethnic Realm and 'National Revolution' from below and above at the Eve of WWII. The Case Study of Lubelszczyzna
- Anca Filipovici (Cluj-Napoca): Interethnic Clashes among Students at the University of Chernovtsy (1930-1940). Daily Life, Propaganda and the Rise of Anti-Semitism in the Multiethnic Borderland of Bukovina
- Leon Saltiel (Thessaloniki): The Legacy of the Millet as a Factor in the "Silence" of the Thessaloniki Christian Elites during the Holocaust

11:00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30 – 13.00: II – National Agendas and Regimes of Occupation
Chair: Caroline Mezger (Munich)
How did the different national and imperial agendas of the Axis powers manifest themselves in regimes of occupation? How did these interact and how do they compare?
- Tommaso Dell’Era (Viterbo): Italian Imperialism, Albanian Nationalism and the Holocaust during the Occupation Period (1939-1943)
- Mirna Zakić (Athens, Ohio): 'The soil which drank German blood will become our living space': Ethnic Germans, Jews, and Serbs in the Occupied Banat
- Mariana Hausleitner (Berlin): The Germans in the Bukovina and the Romanian Banat after 1935

13.00-14.30: Lunch break

14.30-16.00: III - Engineering Social Differences: Ideology and Radicalization
Chair: Kerstin Schwenke (Munich)
How do regimes of occupation reorient or exacerbate social divisions in multiethnic societies? What are the relationships between ideology, radicalization, and practices of occupation?
- Winson Chu (Milwaukee, Wisconsin): "... Reich Germans believe in the German Reich, the Volk Germans believe in the German Volk": Violence and Intraethnic Hierarchies in the Kriminalpolizei in Lodz/Litzmannstadt
- Goran Miljan (Uppsala): The 'Ideal Nation-State' for the 'Ideal New Croat' - Fascism and the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945
- Rachel O’Sullivan (Edinburgh): The Ethnic Germans and Nazi "Colonial" Expansion in Poland

16.00-16.30: Coffee break

16.30-18.30: IV – Dynamics of Violence and Mobilization
Chair: Christian Schmittwilken (Munich)
Why or why not do people engage in violence? How are societies mobilized?
- Jason Tingler (Worchester, Massachusetts): Mosaic of Destruction. The Holocaust and Mass Violence in Chełm, 1939-1944
- Nevena Dakovic (Belgrade): Ujvidek Raid: Holocaust and Interethnic Violence
- Kateryna Budz (Kyiv): The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Holocaust in Galicia (1941-1944)
- Linda Margittai (Szeged): Hungarian-Occupied Vojvodina: The Anatomy of "Bystander" Behaviors in a Multi-Ethnic Society

Friday, 9 February 2018

9.30-11.00: V – Local Practices and Perceptions of Anti-Jewish Persecution
Chair: Gaëlle Fisher (Munich)
What were the practices and perceptions of anti-Jewish persecution in specific localities, and how can we study them?
- Dalia Ofer & Sarah Rosen (Jerusalem): Northern Transnistria: Ukrainians, Jews, Romanians and Nazi Occupiers as Reflected in the Diary of Lipman Kunstadt
- Svetlana Suveica (Regensburg): Dealing with Jewish Property in the Borderlands. Local Public Institutions in Bessarabia during the Holocaust
- Anna Wylegała (Warsaw): Listening to the Contradicting Voices: Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian Narratives on the Holocaust and Plunder of the Jewish Property in Galicia

11.30-13.00: VI – Reckoning with the Holocaust in the Immediate Postwar Period
Chair: Andrea Löw (Munich)
How did different groups and postwar societies confront the legacies of the Holocaust in the immediate postwar period? How much visibility did different groups have and what was their narrative?
- Volha Bartash (Vienna): "The war ended in 1950": German Occupation and Interethnic Relations in the Belarusian-Lithuanian Border Region through the Eyes of the Local Roma Community
- Franziska Exeler (Berlin/Cambridge): Personal Responses to the Aftermath of Nazi Occupation in Post-1944 Soviet Belorussia
- Olha Kolesnyk (Warsaw): Jewish Perception of Soviet Occupation in Lviv in 1939-1941 (Based on Ego-Documents)

13.00-14.30: Lunch break

14.30-15.45: VII – Conveying Catastrophe in Language and Art
Chair: Anna Ullrich (Munich)
How did people communicate about violence in the postwar period, and to which effect?
- Miriam Schulz (New York): Of Ablaves, Uksinikes, and Negers. The Yiddish Language as a Mirror Image of Interethnic Relations and Violence in the Borderlands
- Irina Rebrova (Berlin/Moscow): "German monsters escaped, but there is the entire Hitler system on the dock": Literary Representation of the Soviet Trials against Nazi Perpetrators in the (Post)War Society (the North Caucasian Case)

15.45-16.15: Coffee break

16.15-17.00: Closing Discussion
Moderation: Gaëlle Fisher and Caroline Mezger

Doris Bergen's evening lecture is public and open to all interested listeners. The lecture takes place at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Senatssaal, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München. The ensuing workshop is a closed, internal event.

Kontakt

Gaëlle Fisher / Caroline Mezger

Leonrodstr. 52
80636 München

fisher@ifz-muenchen.de / mezger@ifz-muenchen.de


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