Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, for their role in the alleged forced transfer of Ukrainian children back to Russia. Putin is the latest in a series of sitting heads of state to be issued an arrest warrant by the ICC since the Rome Statute came into force in 2002, including Omar al-Bashir, who was charged with several crimes, including genocide, in 2008. 

Although the forced transfer of children is explicitly listed as one of the four examples of genocide in the Rome Statute and the UN Genocide Convention, neither Putin nor Lvova-Belova were indicted for genocide. What do the charges mean, and is there any likelihood that Putin or Lvova-Belova will face trial? We asked Dr. Joachim Savelsberg, Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair and Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, what to make of the news. 

The ICC alleges both Putin and Lvova-Belova are responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of a population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of a population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation under the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute also refers to the forcible transfer of children under genocide. Why do you think the decision was made not to charge genocide?

Genocide is a very challenging charge for the prosecution. While the forcible transfer of children is one act that may constitute genocide (a condition that seems to be confirmed in this case), the prosecution needs to prove that it or other “acts [were] committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” To prove such intent is difficult. Generally, the ICC prosecutors have chosen the easiest way in this first step against Putin: the forcible transfer of children can be directly linked to him and his “Children’s Rights Commissioner.” Both have publically propagated this transfer and their intent. Command responsibility is most obvious here.

Several organizations and experts have indicated a high likelihood of genocide being committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. Do you envision a scenario in which Putin or another Russian agent is formally charged with genocide?

That is conceivable. In the case of Omar al-Bashir, then President of Sudan, the arrest warrant was first for war crimes and crimes against humanity. About one year later, he was also charged with the crime of genocide. The first charging decision was made against substantial resistance by various actors, including diplomats from influential countries. The genocide charge had to overcome even greater hurdles. In the case of Sudan, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, in the works for many years and including a referendum of independence for South Sudan, with the intent to end a long civil war that had cost an estimated three million lives, seemed to be at stake, at least in the judgment of many diplomats (I wrote about this in detail in Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur). In the current case as well, chances toward diplomatic negotiations with Putin to end the war seem diminished. They would be diminished even further if he was charged with genocide. Nonetheless, such charges might still be filed should Putin ever lose his grip on power and be ousted from the Presidency.

Like the United States, Russia is not a signatory to the Rome Statute after the investigation of Russian forces in Ukraine in 2016. What does this mean for the likelihood of an actual trial for Putin or Lvova-Belova?

Chances of a trial are currently slim. Should Putin travel to one of the 123 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, they would be obliged to arrest him and extradite him to the ICC in The Hague. Other countries could do so. Yet, in the case of Sudan/Darfur, al-Bashir traveled to South Africa (a ratifying state), and the South African authorities did not arrest him. Parts of the S African state were close to doing so, but others allowed for his departure shortly before that arrest was supposed to occur. South Africa thereby offended against international law, a sign of its ambivalence vis-a-vis the ICC (shared with many African countries) and possibly of its desire to keep a-Bashir in the game for a potential peace process. Yet, should Putin be ousted, and should forces come to power in Russia that would benefit from Putin being tried, then such a trial might happen.

This spring, the Minnesota legislature is debating a proposed mandate requiring Holocaust and genocide education in middle and high schools across the state. The proposal comes on the heels of work done in 2021 to increase the presence of the Holocaust and genocide in the revised social studies standards. This bill codifies the language in the standards revision. It establishes a task force of educators, experts, and community members that would work closely with the Minnesota Department of Education to implement requirements. The bill is a joint effort between CHGS and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota & the Dakotas. 

If passed, Minnesota would join twenty-two other states with similar policies, but with two significant differences. First, unlike most states, our proposed mandate would provide funding for educator training. This would ensure teachers from across the state have equitable access to training and resources regardless of where they live. Second, the language in Minnesota’s proposal is more inclusive than other states, listing Black and Indigenous genocides. Specifically, the language includes “Indigenous dispossession, removal, and genocide.” This legislation would be the first state in the country to include Indigenous genocide. 

The Senate has already introduced the bill, having its first hearing on Monday, March 6th in the Education Policy Committee. In addition to written statements from CHGS advisory board members Dr. Sheer Ganor and Dr. Gabriela Spears-Rico, I spoke briefly to the committee about the importance of this bill for Minnesota teachers. I was joined by Luda Anastazievsky of the Ukrainian American Community Center and Kristin Thompson, founder of the Humanus Network and former Education Program Coordinator at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

My statement is below:

When Dr. Stephen Feinstein created our Center in 1997, it was among the first Centers dedicated to studying the Holocaust and genocides in the country. Dr. Feinstein envisioned a research center that could nurture the needs of faculty and students at the University of Minnesota and respond to the growing number of educators across the state looking for resources for their classrooms. Since then, the Center has been at the forefront of preserving the memory of genocide and raising awareness through the development of teaching materials and workshops.

Throughout my near decade with the Center, I’ve had the privilege of working with numerous communities whose legacies are tainted by the legacies of genocide. A paramount concern for all of these communities is the desire to teach Minnesotans about their histories. As one community leader told me, “Genocide is woven into the fabric of Minnesota.” 

He’s right. Over the last five decades, tens of thousands of foreign-born people have found a safe home in Minnesota after fleeing their homelands in the wake of violence and even genocide. Since the 1970s, Khmer, Hmong, Somali, Bosniak, and most recently, Ukrainians have found sanctuary in our state. These numbers don’t factor in groups like the Armenians, Jews, or earlier waves of Ukrainians who came to Minnesota in the early twentieth century in the face of persecution and violence in their homelands. It also doesn’t include Minnesota’s Indigenous nations, who have routinely been subjected to genocidal policies in the state since the first treaty in 1805. 

Our teachers speak to this need. At one of our workshops, I was asked by an educator, “These students are in my classes. How can I possibly tell them their history?” This question is supported by surveys we’ve done with educators that point to the lack of resources as the primary reason teachers give for not including the Holocaust or other genocides in their curriculum. Nearly every respondent said including these topics was important to them, yet less than half spent time on the Holocaust. That number drops significantly for other genocides. 

Members of the committee, we cannot escape the legacies of genocide, but we can better equip teachers to address it in their classrooms. A policy that ensures Holocaust & genocide are incorporated in middle and high school is an important first step, but providing funding that supports the development of new resources is critical.

Note: SF 2442 is currently advancing through Senate committees. It is expected to be introduced in the House soon. 

Joe Eggers is the Interim Director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Recently, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has notoriously gone on antisemitic tirades on social and other forms of media. In early October, Ye tweeted that he was going to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Shortly thereafter, his Twitter account was removed and he has since gone on multiple podcasts to explain himself. During his interview with Piers Morgan, he argued that his tweets stemmed from signing unfair record deals with “Jewish businessmen.” Going on, he claimed that he cannot be antisemitic due to he himself being Jewish and one of the “12 Lost Tribes of Hebrew.” The notion Ye speaks of is that the 12 Lost Tribes of Hebrew are actually Black, an idea coined by Black preachers during the Jim Crow era to counter the notion that Black Americans were an inferior race. Although the belief is not necessarily antisemitic, the concept has been co-opted by known hate groups. Since Ye’s statements, there has been a large fallout, with Ye losing almost all of his brand deals and affiliations. The statements themselves and the people who still choose to support Ye demonstrate, at best, tolerance for casual antisemitism and, at worst, support for it, in the US. Supporters of Ye have used the First Amendment to argue that his viewpoints are protected by Freedom of Speech and that cancel culture is censoring viewpoints.What they refuse to understand is the breadth of what Ye is stating. People are too slow to realize that antisemitism is another form of racism, and that a man as influential as Ye saying these things is a call to action for some. Just recently, an antisemitic hate group hung a banner over a freeway in Los Angeles that stated “Kanye is right” and proceeded to make a Nazi salute gesture. 

The question still stands as to whether or not this rise in antisemitism will continue to worsen, as NBA player Kyrie Irving recently shared an antisemitic film that denies the Holocaust and affirms the idea that Black Americans are Jewish, echoing Ye’s earlier claims. Irving initially refused to explicitly deny that he was antisemitic, and, though he has since apologized, he remains suspended from the league. Once again though, throughout social media comment sections people rally to Irving’s side, arguing that people should be allowed to have their own opinions. These people fail to realize the difference between differing views and hurtful ones. Promoting a film that denies the Holocaust continues to promulgate false and antisemitic narratives. This not only perpetuates revisionist and debunked histories, but is profoundly insulting to and hurtful for Jewish communities, who are already the targets of increasing hate crimes today. 

Ye stated that the reasoning for his Twitter statement was that he wants the Jewish population to feel how he feels as a Black man facing racism. He directly stated during his interview with Piers Morgan “God forbid one comment could cause people to feel any of my pain I’ve felt for years.” In so doing, Ye creates a false dichotomy, leveling the racism experienced by Black communities as justification for antisemitic viewpoints. Continuing on his tangent, Ye also makes an analogy that another reason for his hateful comments was that when one Black person gets pulled over, every Black person in the car with him goes to jail too, but that doesn’t happen to Jewish people. Similarly, this completely disregards the broader notion that is about a police system created to benefit white people at the expense of Black people. Once again, he misses the mark and decides to further harm an already oppressed community instead of questioning the broader systems of inequality that have shaped his hardships.

Ye has had a history of mental health issues, with the cover for his album “Ye” stating: “I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome.” But mental health cannot be an excuse for his actions. Instead of using his platform as a major influence in popular culture to advocate for building communities, Ye has chosen to use it to advocate hate and intolerance. While we should be concerned about the views Ye has espoused, just as worrisome is the level of support he has seen. Hatred and bigotry, in any form, cannot go unchallenged.

Griffin Mckinney is a CHGS undergraduate student staff member.

There are some odd places in Germany’s Deep South that are strangely attractive to American tourists. For one, there is the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s Alpine refuge, which, not too long ago, one of my university colleagues cheerfully described as the high point of his German sightseeing tour; on TripAdvisor the Eagle’s Nest gets just as many thumbs-up as Austria’s Sound of Music tour. Growing up in 1970s Germany, I don’t remember anyone using the term “Eagle’s Nest” or Adlerhorst, probably because political winds were steadily blowing left and pilgrimage to Nazi remnants wasn’t a thing. Another southern tourist attraction—less creepy but still weird enough—is Bavaria’s fairy tale castle Neuschwanstein. A kitsch monster from the 19^th century, it was designed by Mad King Ludwig who never, even in his wildest hallucinations, imagined that one day it would be lifted into the corporate logo of the Walt Disney company and become the go-to castle for Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

It was only recently that northern Germany came up with an answer to these architectural challenges from the south, which is no less Disneyesque than Neuschwanstein and historically at least as unappetizing as the Eagle’s Nest. It’s a replica of the Royal Prussian Palace planted in the middle of Berlin, home to Germany’s last kaiser whose madness was far more consequential for world politics than Ludwig’s. Kaiser Wilhelm’s passion was world domination, not building fairy tale castles, and WWI was a direct result of his imperial hubris. In the end the Kaiser’s empire collapsed, but his palace didn’t. It even remained more or less intact through the next world war and another failed attempt at world domination, this time by the owner of the Eagle’s Nest. And yes, this all sounds like the typical plot for 007 movies: supervillains living in fancy hideouts trying to bring the planet under their control. Even the grand finale could have been taken from a James Bond novel: the Kaiser’s palace was spectacularly blown to bits with dynamite like Auric Goldfinger’s volcano lair in You Only Live Twice. The palace’s lucky streak was over when it ended up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in Berlin’s Soviet Sector, where feudal architecture didn’t have many fans. Later, the communists would proudly claim responsibility for the Big Bang that finished off Prussia’s history and its most visible symbol. Once and for all, so they thought.

You could argue that predicting history and getting it wrong is what Marxists do. But a sequel to the palace’s story in which the German taxpayer is willing to pay half a billion euros for a tacky remake—70 years into the federal republic and with no monarch in sight—would have been even beyond Ian Fleming’s imagination. How did that come about? How could a group of wealthy ultraconservatives, some with close ties to Germany’s far right and antisemitic AfD, lead the entire country by the nose and make parliament agree to pay the bill for a palace look-alike that had virtually no artistic merit? With pockets as deep as their minds were shallow, these businessmen were running campaigns in Germany with Trumpian slogans at a time when Donald Trump was still running casinos into the ground. “Let’s make Berlin beautiful again” was one of those slogans. And it caught on. Hard to believe this happened in the same country that, just a few years earlier and a few blocks away, had reserved prime real estate, bigger than three football fields, for its Holocaust Memorial.

To top it all off, as a finishing touch the palace received its shiny dome again bearing the exact same inscription as in the 1850s. It’s printed in flashy golden letters on a blue ribbon that runs around the dome’s base and demands that “in the name of Jesus all of them that are in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow down on their knees.” This made clear that Prussia was a Christian state with its king solely reporting to God and certainly not to his underlings. And to leave no doubt about which faith is the right faith, the dome was topped with a glittering giant cross that sat on a tiny orb and sent yet another message of world domination. This particular piece of roof decoration has been remade from scratch and reinstalled as well. For what? As a nod to American tourists from the Bible Belt? While the glaring resurrection of cross and orb may warm the hearts of Christian nationalists from all around the globe, it keeps sending chills down the spines of Berlin’s Jewish community who, along with many other groups, protested against the uncontextualized display of religious supremacy.

The palace is no longer called the palace. It’s now a public building named the Humboldt Forum, which at first didn’t have a real function beyond pretending to be the palace. Then, in another breathtakingly callous move, it was decided that the Forum should house Berlin’s Ethnological Museum. Many of its artifacts and treasures are from the heady days when the Kaiser’s navy was roaming the seas, making landfalls in Africa and Asia, massacring the population and mopping up what other colonial powers had missed. Putting the stolen artwork back in the Kaiser’s palace is like decorating the Eagle’s Nest with Nazi plunder. As a result, curators at the Humboldt Forum have a lot of explaining to do right now. There is a good chance that eventually, when claims are settled and things returned to their rightful owners, all that’s left to curate is a Potemkin palace.

So, should you decide to invest your soaring US dollars into cheap euros during the next travel season, there is nothing wrong with spending them on a trip to Mad King Ludwig’s and Walt Disney’s Neuschwanstein. It is, after all, more than a hundred years old and a real castle.

Henning Schroeder is a professor at the University of Minnesota and currently teaches in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch. His email address is schro601@umn.edu and his Twitter handle is @HenningSchroed1.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Luxembourg Agreement, the resulting agreements from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, commonly known as the Claims Conference. The meeting, held just six years after the Holocaust, negotiated tens of billions of dollars in compensation for survivors of the Holocaust, implemented the following year. Each year, the Claims Conference continues to support survivors in dozens of countries around the world. Just last month, the German government pledged another $1.2 billion in funding, including funds explicitly for Holocaust education for the first time. 

The staggering level of support from the German government is in line with the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi government between 1933 and 1945. The Claims Conference, while clearly unable to atone for the past, is an attempt by the German government to answer to crimes committed against European Jews under the Nazi regime. On a recent trip to Berlin, I was reminded that signs of this culpability extend all the way down to the streets, where memorials, placards, and other public history displays make clear the role of the National Socialist government in perpetrating the Holocaust.

But while these memorials to the Holocaust ensure that it can never be ignored or forgotten, not all of German history is on public display. There is a story that is conspicuously absent; Germany’s role as a colonial power. The country’s colonial aspirations began even before it gained overseas territories—through merchants who profited off slave labor in other European colonies. It wasn’t until 1884 when the Berlin Conference established the rules for the European colonization of Africa, that the newly formed German Empire established colonies in East and West Africa and the South Pacific. Like their European counterparts, German officials brutally exploited its colonies. Many of the hallmarks of genocidal oppression elsewhere in African colonies could be found in Germany’s colonies as well, including the violent campaigns of retaliation against tribes asserting independence, most notably the 1904-1907 genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in what is now Namibia. The legacies of German colonialism run much deeper than what can be presented in a blog article, but they still reverberate across the African continent and Germany today. 

The German government has accepted responsibility for its colonial crimes, but only somewhat. In May 2021, Germany formally apologized for its treatment of the Herero and Nama peoples, officially labeling its actions as genocide in a statement read by then Foreign Minister Heiko Maas:

We will officially call these events what they were from today’s perspective, a genocide. In doing so, we acknowledge our historical responsibility. In light of Germany’s historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of victims for forgiveness. 

In December, the agreement was finalized. In addition to a formal apology from the German government, Namibia will receive more than a billion dollars in aid meant to support Namibia’s infrastructure and public services over the next three decades, which amounts to just under $37 million in funds annually. While the funds appear low, Namibia’s Human Development Index is ranked 139th out of 191 nations, meaning there is a great need for support in the country. 

The apology has significant symbolic value and aid for Namibia is much-needed, but I couldn’t help but notice the absence of acknowledgment of Germany’s colonial past in its public history. Berlin’s Tiergarten, which features Holocaust memorials to the Persecuted Homosexuals Under National Socialism and the Roma and Sinti, still includes a statue of Otto von Bismark, the architect of the Berlin Conference. These histories are seemingly at odds with each other and are representative of a country willing to confront the horrors of one past while ignoring another. It’s important to remember that like the Holocaust, Germans of the colonial period would have been exposed to colonialism directly; it wasn’t restricted to overseas territories. Many Africans settled in Germany and, in some cases, even married white German women. However, the experience of Afro-Germans and those in the former colonies don’t seem to be a part of mainstream discourse from the German state. 

In light of this erasure, several groups across Germany are working to raise the profile of the country’s colonial past in the public consciousness. Located in Berlin, the organization Dekoloniale “tests how a metropolis, its space, its institutions and its society can be examined on a broad level for (post-)colonial effects, how the invisible can be experienced and the visible can be irritated.” In so doing, the organization aims to shift the public discourse away from the history of the oppressors to the story of the victims. Some of its work has included the exhibition Looking Back, organized in conjunction with the Treptow Museum. When the museum wanted to revisit the problematic 1896 colonial exhibition in Berlin, Dekoloniale stepped in, helping organize an exhibit that tells the story of the more than 100 African and Pacific Islanders sent to Germany to serve as a human zoo. For me, a particularly astonishing project is its mapping project, connecting the stories of Afro-Germans with Berlin and former German African colonies, bringing the story of the city’s ties with colonialism home.

In Hamburg, Afro-German activists have opened Arca – Afrikanisches Bildungszentrum, an African-focused library, helping to fill a need they felt public libraries would not and providing a cultural hub. The library itself is housed in a former prison (and before that, military barracks) that’s now being used as an artist commune. It’s one of a number of education centers opened across Germany showcasing Black, Afro-German, and Afro-diasporic perspectives and resources. Coming from the United States which incarcerates its Black population at a staggering rate, the symbolism of a former prison now housing an organization that celebrates African & Black identity cannot be missed. 

Despite the many groups working across Germany to raise awareness of its colonial past, it’s an uphill challenge. For instance in Berlin, attempts to rename M-Street (M being a racial slur commonly used during the colonial past) have been rebuffed by residents, echoing a similar unwillingness to rename sites across the Twin Cities (see the debate around Bde Maka Ska and, more recently, Historic Fort Snelling). The street name remains in place, despite continued efforts. In Hamburg, the city’s Speicherstadt district, a UNESCO world heritage site, is receiving millions of dollars in reinvestment in an effort to turn the area into a tourism destination. In spite of the city’s stated goal to create an inclusive space, many of the buildings in the area will now feature the names of European colonial explorers like Columbus, Vespucci, and Marco Polo. These names tie back to a glorified history of European exploration that Hamburg no doubt wants to connect itself to, but do not reflect the diverse population of the city today and serve to reinforce the legacies of colonialism. 

I wrote several years ago after the disappointing vote of Rep. Ilhan Omar on the Armenian genocide that recognizing one genocide doesn’t preclude acknowledging another. I can’t shake a similar feeling I have after my two weeks in Germany. The memorials, displays, and exhibitions across Germany serve as an important reminder to never forget the horrors of the Holocaust but also stand in stark contrast to the largely absent public memory of colonial history. I went to Germany expecting to examine how the Holocaust can serve as a catalyst to publicly present other difficult pasts but I left with the impression that many of the challenges we have in representing the legacies of colonialism in Minnesota are similar in Germany. It became clear that while in some instances Germany can serve as the prime example of a country reckoning with its difficult past, its lack of colonial awareness, at times bordering on denial, shows that it’s essentially no different than many other former colonial powers. 

Note: This trip was part of the “Building a Diverse and Inclusive Culture of Remembrance (DAICOR)” fellowship, a project hosted by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Washington, DC, and CulturalVistas and funded by the Transatlantic Program of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. 

Joe Eggers is the Interim Director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

*Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in the Oral History Journal.

Gelinada Grinchenko, Professor of History at Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, President of the Oral History Association, Ukraine, and Scholar at Risk at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, reflects on her forthcoming book and series of accompanying short films On Kharkiv and ourselves: the city’s fates and experiences in its inhabitants’ oral histories. Gelinada also discusses her experience and role in the context of the current conflict in Ukraine as an oral historian, survivor, and potential storyteller in the future.

‘On the evening of 23 February 2022, my colleagues and I recorded my commentary for a short film to accompany the second part of the book.  The book is in three parts: the beginning of the Nazi-Soviet war and the Nazi invasion in Kharkiv; the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes in the city; and life under occupation, liberation and the end of the war.  This second film focused on the Nazi persecution of the Jews of Kharkiv and its culmination in the execution of about ten thousand Jews in Drobytsky Yar in December 1941-January 1942 on the eastern outskirts of the city. Recording the commentary was hard and back at home, I was worried about how best to combine the voices of the narrators in the film with my commentary as the researcher, together with archive photographs, animation, sound effects, and music. I fell asleep late that night, and two hours later, I woke up from the sound of real explosions: at 5 am on the 24 February 2022 the Russians bombed my city.

‘I began my work on this book in 2021 with two groups of sources: the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation collection of oral histories of the Holocaust survivors’ from Ukraine – recorded in the mid 1990s, and those recorded by the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (Kyiv, Ukraine) between 2018 and 2021. Being recorded at different times, these oral histories provide an opportunity to analyse, among other things, changes in the official narrative of the war.

‘The book is dedicated to my mother. She was born and raised in Kharkiv and experienced the war as a little girl.  The most terrible thing that she remembers is how the track in which she and her mother and several other officer’s families, who were leaving the city, came under bombardment.

‘I am sure that when I am 86, I will also recall with horror the sound of a Russian plane over Kharkiv when my family fled. And now, I perceive the stories of many of the Second World War survivors in a completely different way. When they say that, according to their impression, the plane was flying to kill them directly, earlier I considered that as a hyperbole, an emotional exaggeration. Now I understand and empathise with them. Two months ago, when we fled from Kharkiv in March 2022, it seemed to me too that there were only three of us in the whole world: the Russian killer pilot, my frightened little son, and me.

‘Now that I am in a safe place, I think a lot about the parallels between my experience and the experience of those who survived the Second World War. The escalation of “never again” into “never? again!” turned my personal life and my research beliefs and priorities upside down.  From my own experience – no longer as a researcher but as a survivor – I see that we have very few ethical standards, and moral guidelines for conducting oral history research in times of war. This is a particular concern for people who continue to experience the trauma of loss, displacement, bombing, or flight. How should researchers approach fieldwork in times of continuously unfolding trauma? How can we conduct interview-based research in times of war without harming those with whom we work? These are the central questions of a planned summer institute: Witnessing War in Ukraine, Oral History and Interview-based research.’

For more information about the summer institute, click here.

To watch the first of the short films about the beginning of the war in 1941 in Kharkiv:

Community engagement is vital—now more than ever—for fostering a more inclusive understanding of the liberal arts and sciences in this current world. Following a brief hiatus during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CLA Engagement Hub (located in Pillsbury Hall) began hosting residencies in 2021-2022. Scholars from the university have since partnered with community members to promote shared interests within the public spaces of both Pillsbury Hall and the larger Twin Cities metro.

In this piece, we are highlighting a recent public art exhibition that features one of the current Engagement Hub residents, Voice to Vision. Professor Feinberg also holds a CLA Engagement Hub residency for the 2022-2023 academic year, and is continuing his collaborative project with various storytellers with connections to the Twin Cities. 

The gallery exhibition included works from Voice to Vision, a series of collaboratively-produced works of art with survivors of genocide and mass violence from around the world. The various series bring together multiple artistic subjects simultaneously, and they put into dialogue different voices, historical events, and intergenerational memory. 

The Engagement Hub is not the only recent venue displaying Voice to Vision artworks. On September 9th and 10th, 2022, the East Side Arts Council organized the Solidarity Street Gallery in Saint Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood. This year’s festival was the third of its kind, and the title, “Resilient Generations,” pointed to the lived experiences in East Saint Paul’s many Southeast Asian communities. As the event description also highlighted, the galleries, events, and culinary pop-ups not only feature the ways language, memory, and culture continue across generations; they also serve as a call for solidarity against anti-Asian violence that has only become more severe in the past several years. 

Payne-Phalen is the largest of Saint Paul’s neighborhoods. Located north and slightly east of downtown, the region has long been a center for migration, and the architecture, place names, and businesses reflect this history. The Solidarity Street Gallery included both a curated gallery exhibition as well as street galleries that profiled public art on display throughout the year. 

One of the most striking pieces from Voice to Vision that also appeared in Feinberg’s retrospective that marked his retirement was Voice to Vision XI. Consisting of twelve pieces that form the shape of a large boat, each panel is the product of an individual storyteller’s experiences shaped by the Vietnam War and its aftermath. No two panels being alike causes the viewer to confront the realities of survivor testimony: points of view are varied, subjective, and not monolithic, and only in recognizing lived, human experience as such can we grapple with the past often told through monumental narratives. 

The galleries varied in terms of location. Some were located in former office spaces, while others could be found inside the many local businesses along Payne Avenue, which allowed visitors to not only engage with the diverse commercial spaces in the neighborhood but also see the ways art blurred the boundaries between public and personal. 

We at CHGS encourage you to browse the incredible roster of residencies for the 2022-23 academic year. For more information on Voice to Vision, please visit either our collections page, or the UMN LIbraries’ Digital Conservancy.

Meyer Weinshel completed his PhD in Germanic Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is Head of Programming, Publications, and Research at the Center for Austrian Studies, and the Collections Curator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies. From 2021-2022, he was a Co-PI (and later postdoctoral researcher) for the Minnesota Human Rights Archive project (MHRA). He also taught German studies coursework in the UMN Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch (GNSD) from 2015-2020, and served as a visiting lecturer of Yiddish studies in the Ohio State University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in 2021. From 2018 to 2020, he was also involved with various Yiddish pedagogy initiatives at the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA)—including the piloting of their new textbook, In eynem, working for the Book Center’s Steiner Yiddish Summer Program, and designing and teaching Yiddish community-education courses with Jewish Community Action (Minneapolis, MN). In addition to subject specializations in genocide studies, German studies, Yiddish studies, and Jewish studies, he also researches LGBTQIA+ histories, memory, translation, and migration.

This summer my tenure as director of CHGS comes to an end. Since the moment I arrived in Minneapolis from Germany in August 2012, I have marveled at the intellectual vigor, ingenuity, and enthusiasm for learning at the University of Minnesota. I feel honored and humbled to have worked alongside and with so many wonderful colleagues. What we have achieved here at the Center over the last decade in essence is due to the special bonds and partnerships forged between our inspiring faculty, tirelessly dedicated staff, and superb student scholars. Collaboration and timely exchanges at the local, national and international levels have also enabled us to develop an exceptional range of scholarly, teaching, and public engagement programs.

I truly take heart in the manner in which our team has upheld the Center’s strong tradition of outreach to educators and the public at large, affirming the legacy of the Center’s founding director Stephen Feinstein. To that end, it was imperative that we expanded the Center’s resources on the Holocaust and other genocides, including those that occurred on North American soil.  

These past ten whirlwind years have been a time of intense learning for me. I have been touched by survivors and descendants who confided in me their stories of loss and pain, but also resilience and hope. I was privileged to learn from artists whose work illuminated the past in powerful new ways, and from teachers seasoned in engaging creatively, learners with the difficult truths of the histories and lasting legacies of mass violence. In my classes, I was heartened by students who shared their deep convictions in ending hatred and embracing humanity’s fullness.

At the Center our goal has been to construct a platform to support and promote this spirit, knowledge, and skills, facilitating bridges between scholars, students, educators, advocates, and interested audiences community-wide. Our conference this July, Education after Genocide: Shifting Approaches to Conflict, Prevention, and Redress, the culmination of a year of careful planning, stands in tribute to the CHGS approach and philosophy.   After this conference, I am proud to hand the reins of our center to Assistant Director Joe Eggers who will serve for one year as the Interim Director of CHGS. I cannot think of a better fit for this transitional period than Joe, whose professionalism and commitment to the Center´s mission have proven pivotal for countless programs and initiatives. In addition to his many roles, Joe will coordinate the Center´s public programs with the counsel of the Advisory Board and continue providing opportunities for students, faculty, and educators.

I look forward to seeing the Center grow in scope and impact over the next years under new leadership. I am confident that many new opportunities and alliances await. For the upcoming academic year, I was awarded a fellowship to continue my current research in genocide memory studies at the Department of Social Anthropology and the Centro Internacional de Memoria y Derechos Humanos at UNED University in Madrid. Even though I will be based in Europe, I am only an email away and I look forward to advancing the cause of the Center in a different capacity.   The relevance of Holocaust and genocide studies and education to the realities that are unfolding in the US and globally cannot be sufficiently stressed. In the hopeful words of Spanish Buchenwald survivor and acclaimed writer Jorge Semprún:   The world doesn’t have to be unfair or unbearable…we can fix certain things. I still have those illusions, perhaps more than ever.  

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There are several towns named Wittenberg in the US, but there is only one in Germany. Growing up in West Germany I didn’t hear much about it because Wittenberg was in the East, on the other side of the Iron Curtain. We learned at school that Martin Luther taught there and kicked off the Protestant Reformation. However, that he personally nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg—as the story goes—is just as likely as Walt Disney having drawn the first Mickey Mouse draft himself. After the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain went away in 1989, Wittenberg awoke from its Dornröschenschlaf (Sleeping Beauty slumber), dusted itself off and emerged as a major tourist destination. Today it is the city with the highest density of UNESCO World Heritage sites, four in total and all connected to Luther’s life and the Reformation—must-visits in a Mecca for evangelical globetrotters. One of those sites received a lot of press coverage earlier this month that once again exposed the ugly underbelly of Luther’s teachings and the callousness of Germany’s highest court.

The medieval Judensau sculpture placed on one of Wittenberg’s churches shows people identifiable as Jews suckling from a pig’s teats and a rabbi peering into its anus. It’s not the only antisemitic carving from ancient times still visible on German churches, but the importance of the Wittenberg relief lies in its direct ties to Luther. An inscription that was added to the sculpture in the 16th century quotes from one of several anti-Jewish tracts by Luther—which today sound like blueprints for Kristallnacht, the 1938 November pogroms in Nazi Germany. No wonder the Nazis had a sweet spot for the great reformer and even displayed Luther’s notorious pamphlet “On the Jews and Their Lies” during their Nuremberg rallies.

In response to a call by a local Jewish man to remove the sculpture, Germany’s federal court of justice agreed that the sculpture is deeply offensive and “antisemitism carved in stone,” but denied his call for removal since the existing memorial and information board enabled “clarification” to help “counter exclusion, hatred and defamation.” So far, so good. One could argue that the inside of a public museum provides a better space for contextualization than the outside wall of a Christian church, but even there, one would think, placing explanations on an information board might put things in perspective. When I first read the supposedly clarifying text, however, I couldn’t help but feel that sometime in the 1930s a spaceship must have landed in Germany, with Nazi aliens who brought the country and its well-meaning people under control (im nationalsozialistisch beherrschten Deutschland). Not exactly what you’d want tourists to read during their tour through Wittenberg, or would you? The memorial was installed in 1988 when East Germany was still under communist rule. Communists in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) felt they had nothing to be sorry for. In their view, all the Nazis had fled to West Germany and East Germany was an enchanted garden full of righteous anti-fascists. Which, by the way, strikes me as an early version of the fairy tale Vladimir Putin likes to tell about the anti-Nazi mission of modern Russia. But I digress. The fact that the Wittenberg memorial dates from the late GDR might explain its weirdly detached language, which the court, as a compromise and for the sake of true “clarification,” could have asked to revise and make more explicit, but didn’t.

There are more unpleasant historical facts in and around Wittenberg that have been successfully kept under wraps for decades. It’s no surprise that the university in Wittenberg where Martin Luther taught is named after him. In the 1990s, when I had my first tenured appointment at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, I always assumed that it had carried his name for centuries. Later I learned that Luther didn’t become its namesake until November 1933—with the enthusiastic approval of Hermann Göring, Prussia’s freshly minted prime minister. That the second-highest ranking Nazi in the Third Reich acted, for obvious reasons, as the proud godfather at MLU’s christening wasn’t much talked about at the university. Scientists don’t like to publish negative results, but neither do Hallenser historians.

Wittenberg proudly presents itself to the outside world, online and in print, as Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Luther City) and Halle markets itself as Händelstadt because the Baroque composer Georg Friedrich Händel was born there. Although he left Halle at an early age and rose to fame in England, Halle makes enormous efforts to put the Händel brand on pretty much everything you can think of: music festivals, food, merchandise—you name it. Not even Salzburg does that with its very own Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. One reason why Halle tries to numb your senses with the constant Händel bombardment may be to distract from its other (in)famous son: Reinhard Heydrich. In contrast to Händel, Heydrich was born into a well-to-do family from the upper echelons of Halle society, and, ironically, with equally high musical ambitions as the Händel family. Heydrich’s father owned and ran the local music conservatory and young Reinhard was supposed to become an opera singer. While the English Wikipedia entry for Halle (Saale) lists him under “notable people” as “Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), one of the leading Nazis in World War II and main architects of the Holocaust,” you don’t find him at all in the German version, which in fact looks like it was written by the Halle tourist bureau. Heydrich is mentioned on a separate, German-language-only Wikipedia page titled “Sons and daughters of Halle (Saale)” with all his fancy Nazi titles—without comment or reference to the Holocaust. Given its ruling on the Judensau, would Germany’s federal court of justice settle for that level of “clarification” too?

Henning Schroeder is a professor at the University of Minnesota and currently teaches in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch. His email address is schro601@umn.edu and his Twitter handle is @HenningSchroed1.

*Editor’s Note: This piece was originally posted by the UMN Human Rights Program. Click here to read the original post.

In Serbia, since the wars accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia ended in 2001, another battle has been waged over representations of that violence. Competing interpretations are advanced by state and non-state groups over what happened and who is to blame. This battle can result in denial of genocide and other atrocities, which causes pain for survivors and victims and can enhance risk of future violence. While some research has been conducted on this process, gender has been under-researched as an important corresponding dimension. Women have unique experiences and memories of war and violence which may not be included in dominant narratives. In Serbia, women anti-war activists like Women in Black have been leading efforts for genocide acknowledgment and post-conflict reconciliation between opposing ethnic groups. In collaboration with Professor Joachim Savelsberg and thanks to the generous support of the Human Rights Initiative, we are exploring the role of women in the cultural processing of the Yugoslav wars in Serbia.

I was born in Yugoslavia, that country that no longer exists, and my family immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 during the wars. Since then, I have been asking questions about the links between my personal experiences and the broader forces at work in post-conflict societies, which eventually led me to pursue my PhD in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. My research focuses on the relationships between gender, activism, and collective memory of mass violence and genocide.

Here at UMN I collaborate closely with a community of scholars of mass violence and collective memory such as Alejandro Baer and Joachim Savelsberg, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and the Human Rights Program. In my first year of graduate school, I was invited to collaborate with Joachim Savelsberg on a project about gender and collective memory in Serbia, which was gratefully funded by the HRI. This funding allowed me to travel to Serbia in fall 2021 and conduct four months of fieldwork through the project “History in Whose Hands? Gendering the Collective Memory of Perpetrators in Serbia.” 

Our project asks about the role of Serbian women in constructing collective memory of the Yugoslav wars. What role do women play in the cultural processing of past mass violence, specifically as members of the “perpetrator people” of that violence? We focused on Serbian women who are part of an organization dedicated to memory issues (Women in Black) and another group of women who are not organized and must process (or avoid) the past in their everyday interactions. We also decided to recruit a small group of six men to conduct comparative interviews, which validated our expectations that there are significant gender differences in collective memory construction in Serbia. I conducted four focus groups, 47 in-depth individual interviews, and ethnographic observations with activists in Serbia and we are now processing these data, analyzing it, and writing up our findings to submit for publication.

This project has greatly contributed to my academic and professional development. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Savelsberg on every stage of the project, thereby gaining skills in proposal development, development of research instruments, and conducting fieldwork in Serbia. I am now involved in processing, analyzing, and writing up the data, which will result in co-authored presentations and publications. Finally, the data collected in Serbia will contribute importantly to the empirical foundation of my doctoral dissertation on gender, feminist activism, and collective memory of the Yugoslav wars in Serbia.

In addition to the personal and professional benefits, this research has already and will continue to help build academic and practical knowledge in the field of human rights. Though we are still in the data processing and analysis stage and have not yet reached final conclusions about our findings, preliminary analysis demonstrates clear connections between gender and collective memory of the Yugoslav wars in Serbia. The two key dimensions of the relationship are: 1) gendered inequality in access to and participation in collective memory processes, and 2) the nature of the narratives that women and feminist activists interviewed articulate, which are more inclusive, empathetic, and peaceful than the nationalist narratives of the Serbian men interviewed and the Serbian government.

For example, in terms of the first dimension of inequality in participation in collective memory processes, the men interviewed shared that they speak openly and often about the wars in male-dominated spaces such as pubs, social clubs, and public squares. In contrast, almost none of the non-activist women interviewed said that they ever speak about the wars, not even in their families or friendship circles. The wars are seen as a men’s topic, with women having nothing to contribute. When I told men I was speaking to women about the wars, they were astonished and dismayed, saying things like, “Well what are you asking them for!”

In contrast to the lack of participation among non-activist women, the activists of Women in Black and other groups defy these expectations in speaking out against the wars and the ongoing denial in Serbian society, and they are vilified for their activities. They are ostracized, rejected, and attacked partially because, through engaging in their activism, they are not conforming to the gendered expectations in Serbian society for appropriate behavior for “normal women.” While I was conducting fieldwork in Belgrade, the offices of Women in Black were attacked and defiled twice, needing to be repainted. The graffitied insults are always gendered, calling the women witches and even worse feminized insults.

The personal narratives that men and women (both activist and non-activist) shared about the wars also differed across gendered lines. The men repeated the Serbian government’s nationalistic narrative of Serbian suffering and heroism during the wars. They minimized Serbia’s crimes, denying any collective responsibility for them, and justified Serbian military intervention in the other Yugoslav republics as necessary to defend “our” people and our territories from foreign attackers. In contrast, women expressed empathy for the victims of the other ethnic groups and pain regarding the violence that tore apart their country and continues to breed resentment in Serbian society. Several of them expressed fears as mothers for their children growing up in such a society and being taught to practice hatred and violence towards people of other ethnic groups.

These findings are relevant for academic audiences interested in denial and acknowledgement of genocide and other atrocities and gendered power relations in post-conflict societies. But they are also relevant to human rights practitioners who seek to challenge these harmful denialistic narratives, and who can draw on the more inclusive memory practices exhibited by these women interviewees. I believe that women, their activism, and their memories, have important contributions to make towards post-conflict reconciliation if they are more included in official processes. They inspire me to continue producing research that can hopefully illuminate and advance the important memory work of women and feminist activists in post-war societies.

Nikoleta Sremac is a PhD Student in Sociology and a Research Assistant at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. She studies gender, social movements, culture, and genocide and mass violence. Her dissertation focuses on gendered memory politics and activism related to the 1990s Yugoslav Wars in Serbia.