Who was Benjamin Murmelstein? Why would Claude Lanzmann dedicate over 3 hours to him in his latest film The Last of the Unjust? Murmelstein was a rabbi and teacher from Vienna, third Jewish elder of the Thereseinstadt ghetto, and the only surviving Jewish elder of any of the Jewish Councils set up by the Nazis. Condemned by many in the Jewish Community as a traitor and a Nazi collaborator he was tried and acquitted by the Czech authorities after the war settling in exile in Rome where he lived until his death in 1989.

He testified at the trial of Thereseinstadt Commandant Karl Rahm and wrote and published a book of his experiences in Terezin: Il ghetto-modello di Eichmann (Theresienstadt: Eichmann’s Model Ghetto), in 1961. He submitted the book to Israeli prosecutors to use at the Eichmann trial (Adolf Eichmann, SS officer in charge of the deportation of the Jews of Europe) a submission that went unused.

Murmelstein had much valuable information to offer, especially on Eichmann So much so that if Murmelstein’s testimony had been used it would have dispelled any notion of the dispassionate Nazi bureaucrat who only followed orders as defined by Hannah Arendt’s term the “banality of evil.” Instead we would have seen Eichmann as a man who loved his job and pursued it with zeal and passion above and beyond what was required by his superiors. We would also have seen a corrupt man who lined his own pockets with Jewish funds for both personal and professional gain, as the extra money afforded him the financial independence to run his department apart of the bureaucratic machine and away from the eyes of his superiors.

So why is Murmelstein’s story coming to light now and why did Lanzmann wait nearly 40 years to make this film? Possibly the world was not ready for such a controversial and ambivalent figure. In 1975 Lanzmann interviewed Murmelstein for a project he was working on which later became the critically acclaimed 9-hour documentary Shoah. The interviews show that Murmelstein lived in the center of what Primo Levi referred to as the “grey zone” in his book The Drowned and the Saved. Levi’s theory is that those of us who did not experience the lager (camps) and ghettos cannot place ourselves in a position to judge those that were there, nor can we view the Holocaust as something that is black or white, good or evil. We simply cannot know what we would do to survive under the circumstances.

Murmelstein is clear that he was no saint and that he loved power, danger and adventure that went with the job of being a Jewish community leader and later elder.  But he also speaks in terms of the expectations that others had in times that were not ordinary. Murmelstein towards the end of the film tells Lanzmann that in Thereisenstadt there were no saints. “There were martyrs, but martyrs are not necessarily saints.”

Murmelstein points out that many people tried to conduct life as they had under normal circumstances but there was nothing normal about Thereseinstadt, the model ghetto the Nazis had created to fool the world and the Jews imprisoned there about the “Final Solution.” While Murmelstein claims his intentions were to save as many Jews as he could, others viewed him as a tyrant, a collaborator, and a man who only cared about himself. Yet many times in the interviews Murmelstein speaks of the opportunities he had to escape with his family to England and to Palestine, but he remained feeling it was his responsibility.

As the film begins we watch the now 87-year-old Lanzmann read from Murmelstein’s book in Prague, Nisko, and Theresienstadt.  One might wonder if this is an egotistical ploy by Lanzmann, but as the Murmelstein interviews unfold and the 3 1/2 hours go by we realize that Lanzmann has a real affection for Murmelstein, so much so he has become a surrogate witness. Lanzmann has become Murmelstein’s voice, reading passages of his beautifully worded testimony in the places that Murmesltein describes, thus collapsing time, bringing past and present together in the same space, much as he did in Shoah.

Here amidst the past and present we hear Murmelstein in his own words, we are drawn to Murmelstein much like Lanzmann is by his bold storytelling, his intelligence, knowledge of mythology, literature and history.  He seems to be telling the truth about his experiences, admitting to his flaws and the perceptions of his decisions.

The Last of the Unjust will not be remembered as a landmark documentary about the Holocaust like Shoah. Still, it is an important work that represents a different approach to Holocaust documentary. Lanzmann acts as a surrogate witness, in this case representing an extraordinary and at the same time flawed character steeped in moral ambivalence. Lanzmann offers the viewer a much more complex and deeper understanding of humanity during the Shoah by giving a voice to a survivor whose testimony was silenced by those who were not yet ready to hear what he had to say.

Jodi Elowitz is the Outreach Coordinator for CHGS and the Program Coordinator for the European Studies Consortium. Elowitz is currently working on Holocaust memory in Poland and artistic representation of the Holocaust in animated short films. 

Last month, the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) released a comprehensive study on the experiences of antisemitism among Jews in 8 European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom)-whose Jews comprise 90% of the EU’s total Jewish population.

The FRA study indicates that two-thirds of Jewish respondents consider antisemitism to be a problem today in their countries. Three-fourths believe the problem has gotten worse in the past five years, and 68% percent say they at least occasionally avoid wearing, carrying or displaying things that might help people identify them as Jews in public.

A distinctive feature about this study is that it is centered on European Jews’ experiences and perceptions, rather than on “counting” antisemites -who nowadays often reject having an antisemitic standpoint or motivation- and antisemitic incidents, which often go unreported. Is there seepage of antisemitism into the European mainstream? Yes, according to Europe’s Jews.

The study offers what classic sociologist W.I. Thomas labeled the “definition of the situation” by social actors – in our case: Jews in Europe, who increasingly feel uncomfortable, pressured and even threatened as Jewish citizens in their respective countries. And, as Thomas wrote in his famous theorem, situations defined as real are real in their consequences. Almost half of those surveyed in Belgium, France, and Hungary indicate they have considered emigrating because of the situation.

These results, which confirm findings of earlier studies done by outside organizations, state agencies and local Jewish communities, are disturbing. They should serve as a wake up call for policy makers, educators and researchers.

While the issue of antisemitism is very often downplayed in academia, CHGS takes that call with the importance and the rigor it deserves. On December 5th we hosted, together with the Center for Austrian Studies, an interdisciplinary panel discussion on antisemitism: then and now. We brought together scholars from the United States and Europe and explored continuities and discontinuities in the history of antisemitism, its current intellectual sources and expressions in different contexts. This event -which will be soon available on our YouTube channel – laid the foundation for what we expect to be an ongoing and much needed scholarly discussion on this topic.

Best wishes for a happy, productive and healthy 2014.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Kristallnacht: Violence, Memory, and History

Edited by Nathan Wilson, Colin McCullough

What did people hear about Kristallnacht outside of Germany in 1938 from governments and media sources? How did governments and ordinary people respond to the plight of the Jewish community there? How have lives been affected by Kristallnacht in the seventy years since its occurrence? This interdisciplinary study of erasure and enshrinement seeks to answer these questions, exploring issues of memory and forgetting (in both the material and symbolic sense), and how the meaning of Kristallnacht has been altered by various actors since 1938.

An extraordinary international exhibit is touring Minnesota this month: Lawyers without Rights. Jewish Lawyers in Germany Under the Third Reich. The display was created by the German and American Bar Associations and was brought here as an outreach initiative of the Federal District Court of Minnesota. The exhibit reflects a time in Germany when individual rights and the rule of law were systematically disregarded.  
My own grandfather, Walter Mieses, was one of the many lawyers whose destiny was tied to the fate of democracy. He was born in Leipzig in 1900. At the age of 28 he became the youngest judge in the state of Saxony, serving at the Regional Court in Leipzig.

In 1929 he resigned his position in the civil service and became a private attorney, representing clients before the Court of Appeals of the State of Saxony, in Dresden. In April 1933, the National Socialist decree that refused all Jewish judges, public prosecutors, and lawyers access to the courts brought his brilliant career to a halt. In the same year he emigrated to Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Walter Mieses never practiced law again. But his passion for the legal profession and his profound sense of justice and fairness, led him to become a frequent contributor to Argentina’s immigrant and national newspapers, writing articles on civil and criminal law, international affairs, and Jewish-German relations. He died of injuries suffered in a bus accident in Buenos Aires in 1967.

I never met my grandfather but I grew up hearing stories about Opa Walter. Now, thanks to this important effort of Minnesota’s legal community, his story and that of many other Jewish German lawyers, judges and prosecutors will become known to a broad audience. For that I am personally grateful.

Some lawyers, like my grandfather, were able to escape Nazi-Germany to rebuild their lives in another country. But too many of his colleagues, like millions of others, did not escape. Their fate was incarceration and murder.

This exhibit pays homage to all these lawyers by teaching an important lesson: the rule of law is as fragile as glass and its destruction is always the prelude of atrocities.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Myron Kunin passed away at the age of 85 last week. It was Myron’s passion for art that brought him together with Stephen Feinstein. Together they curated Witness and Legacy, a major commemorative art exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz that debuted in St. Paul in 1995 and traveled until 2002. That collaboration began the friendship and vision that lead to the founding of our Center in 1997.

We will honor Myron’s his legacy as we strive to fulfill our mission of educating all sectors of society about the Holocaust and other genocides.

May his memory be a blessing to us all.

Obituary: Myron Kunin, businessman, patron of the arts
Star Tribune 10-31-2013

My Parents II, 1946. Henry Koerner (1915-1991)

This painting from Myron Kunin’s  collection has been associated with the Center since it was used to promote the Absence/Presence exhibition of 1999. It was also used as the cover photo for Dr. Stephen Feinstein’s book of the same name.

The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome

by Allesandro Portelli

Winner of the 2005 Oral History Association Book Award

On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335 unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack the day before. Alessandro Portelli has crafted an eloquent, multi-voiced oral history of the massacre, of its background and its aftermath. The moving stories of the victims, the women and children who survived and carried on, the partisans who fought the Nazis, and the common people who lived through the tragedies of the war together paint a many-hued portrait of one of the world’s most richly historical cities. The Order Has Been Carried Out powerfully relates the struggles for freedom under Fascism and Nazism, the battles for memory in post-war democracy, and the meanings of death and grief in modern society.

“Students here seem to have a more emotional connection to the Holocaust”

Falko Schmieder is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and is currently teaching the course “History of the Holocaust.” He has studied Communications, Political Science and Sociology at various German Universities. Since 2005 he has worked as a researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin. Together with Matthias Rothe, the course “Adorno, Foucault, and beyond” is being offered through the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch. Falko Schmieder will give a lecture at the CHGS Library (room 710 Social Sciences) on The Concept of Survival on November 20th at 12 p.m.

What are the main differences between students in the US and in Germany regarding knowledge of and attitude towards the Holocaust?

After my first experiences here I would say the German students tend to know more about the historical preconditions of the Holocaust, especially the long tradition of religious anti-Judaism, and, of course they have more detailed information about German History in general. On the other hand, the students here seem to have a more emotional connection and a more political access to the subject. Many of them have come in contact with Holocaust survivors in High school, as part of their educational training, and because of the many Holocaust Survivors who emigrated to the US and started a new life here it’s a more deeper innervated history. By the way, I am very fortunate to have the Holocaust Survivor Dora Zaidenweber coming to my class to speak this semester. I attended the presentation of her book The Sky Tinged Red, and was moved to learn about her personal story. I was astonished how many young people attended this program.

What do you expect your students to come out of your course?

I would like to make them aware of two things in particular: First, that modern antisemitism has a long prehistory, which is not limited to German history; and second, that antisemitism is in no way a thing of the past. Although it might have changed some of its features, it is still relevant today – at the end of my lecture I will deal with the phenomenon of antisemitism without Jews, and I will discuss some examples of contemporary reactions on the banking crisis in Germany, in which you clearly can find a revival of old antisemitic stereotypes.

How do you approach these sensitive and difficult issues in the classroom?

 In the first class, when I introduced myself to the students, I showed some photographs that I took in Berlin shortly before coming to Minneapolis. These photographs show two Berlinian Jewish institutions, and how they are monitored by surveillance cameras and by the police. The American students were very surprised to learn that it’s still necessary to constantly protect Jewish organizations and sites in this country, because of the fear (and possibility) of antisemitic attacks.

How does  Holocaust studies relate to your current research?

My current research project is on the History of the Concept of Survival, for which the Holocaust and its aftermath is of great importance. The rupture in history is reflected in the invention of many new concepts: think of “survivor syndrome,” “survivor guilt” and others, or in the disruption of traditional meanings of concepts. It is revealing that Claude Lanzmann or the well-known Spanish writer and Holocaust Survivor Jorge Semprún replaced the term “survivor” with “revenant” because older meanings of survival or survivorship no longer seemed appropriate to deal with the traumatic experiences in the extermination camps.

Last June, the allegation that a 94 year old Ukrainian immigrant living in Northeast Minneapolis could have been a top commander of a Nazi- SS lead unit, received international media attention. The public’s response was polarized as for as many who felt justice needed to be served there were just as many who felt that we should leave him alone.  Should a person’s chronological age prevent them from being accountable for their crimes?
This week’s news, the death of Erich Priebke, at the age of 100 in Rome, provides a clear answer to that question. Priebke, one of the few surviving former Nazi-SS

Hauptsturmführer (captain) was among those held responsible for the mass execution of 335 civilians at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome, one of the worst atrocities committed by German occupiers in Italy during World War II.

After the war Priebke escaped from a British prison camp in Rimini, Italy, and immigrated to Argentina. Like many other high-ranking Nazis, he was aided by the infamous Odessa (Organization of Former SS Members). He lived for decades in the Andean resort town of Bariloche without concealing his identity. He ran a delicatessen, traveled back and forth to Europe, and even became the director of the local German school.

While searching for another suspected Nazi criminal, an ABC News crew came upon Priebke in the early 1990s, and he freely admitted who he was. That revelation led to a lengthy extradition process. On November 20, 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, the former SS officer-who remained faithful to the Nazi ideology and never expressed regret for his actions-boarded a plane for Italy, to stand trial there.

After initial proceedings in which it was ruled that the statute of limitations on the crime had elapsed, Priebke finally faced trial in 1997 and was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the 1944 massacre. He was then 85 years of age.

His case proved that it is never too late to seek justice.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Calls for Papers, Conferences, Workshops, Seminars

Deadline: October 15, 2016 – Workshop on Localization of videotaped testimonies of victims of National Socialism in educational programs. Workshop funded by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ) in preparation of the next volume of the series “Education with Testimonies.” Vienna, January 9-11 2017

Deadline: October 16, 2016 – Sustainability and Transformation: International Conference on Europeanists; University of Glasgow, UK, July 12-14 2017

Deadline: October 30, 2016 – Stepping Back in Time. Living History and Other Performative Approaches to History in Central and Southeastern Europe; German Historical Institute, Warsaw, February 20–21 2017

Application Deadline: November 1, 2016 – 2017 Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar: Gender and Sexuality in the Holocaust; USHMM, Washington DC, January 9-13 2017

Deadline: December 15, 2016 – International Association of Genocide Scholars Conference; University of Queensland, Brisbane, July 9-13, 2017

Deadline: December 15, 2016 – Media and History: Crime, Violence, and Justice; International Association for Media and History, Paris, July 10-13 2017

Currently Accepting Proposals – Thinking Through the Future of Memory; Council for European Studies, Amsterdam, December 3-4 2016

Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland: the Victims’ Perspective; Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, Jordanstown Campus, October 19, 2016

5th Annual Symposium on Women and Genocide in the 21st Century: The Case of Darfur; Washington DC, October 21-22 2016

Oral History in the Age of Change: Social Contexts, Political Importance, Public Challenges; Kharkiv, Ukraine, December 1-2 2016

International Workshop: Colors of Blood, Semantics of Race; Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, December 15-16 2016

Museums and Their Publics at Sites of Conflicted History; POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, March 13-15 2017

The Holocaust and History: The Work and Legacy of David Cesarani; University of London, London, April 3-4 2017

Emerging Expertise Conference: Holding Accountability Accountable; Clark University, Massachusetts, April 6-9 2017

Traces and Memories of the Cambodian Genocide: Tuol Sleng in testimony, literature, and media representations; University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 6-9 2017

Calls for Journal Submissions

Deadline for second issue: December 15, 2016 – Antisemitism Studies; Indiana University Press

Deadline: July 1, 2017 – Transitional Justice from the Margins: Intersections of Identities, Power and Human Rights; International Journal for Transitional Justice, Oxford University Press

Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal; Manchester University Press

Working Paper (WP) Series; Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory Network

IAGS Emerging Scholar Mentorship Program

IAGS is pleased to announce a mentor program for emerging scholars. In its early stages, the mentor program will focus on assisting emerging scholars (i.e., students in graduate [M.A. and Ph.D.] programs who intend to work in genocide studies; post-doctoral researchers; unwaged Ph.Ds, and recently-graduated scholars who are within the first three years of their first professional position.) with advice on preparing a specific piece of work for publication. 

The manuscript in question should be of regular journal length and at a stage where it is very near ready for publication – manuscripts that are underdeveloped or in a very rough state may be denied access to the mentoring program until they are revised. IAGS IS seeking the following:

• Volunteers among the group of established scholars who are willing to work with an emerging scholar in readying a journal article or book chapter for publication. Please send us your name, contact information, areas of expertise, and the languages you are able to work in. You will not be asked to work with more than one emerging scholar per year, unless you specifically state your willingness to do so. If you receive a manuscript that you feel is not yet ready for mentoring, you may request it be returned to the emerging scholar for further revision

• Emerging scholars who would like advice from an established scholar to help ready a journal article or book chapter for publication. Along with your name and contact information, please send an abstract for the specific piece for which you would like to be mentored and the language in which you would like to mentored. We will do our best to accommodate your request, but we are dependent on the availability of a suitable mentor.

• Genocide Studies and Prevention will also refer journal submissions to this program when they receive articles that show promise, but require further polishing before being sent off to peer review. Publication in Genocide Studies and Prevention is not guaranteed through this program. This is a volunteer-based program solely designed to build helping networks between established and emerging IAGS scholars – it is not available to non-members.

Please send all information to Andrew Woolford, IAGS President awoolford@genocidescholars.org

Funding Opportunities

We are pleased to offer HGMV graduate students funding support for travel to present their research at academic conferences, which includes an exciting new partnership with the UMN Libraries:

CHGS / HRP travel awards funded by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Human Rights Program

Library Archives travel awards: the Kautz Family YMCA Archives HGMV Graduate Award, and the IHRC Archives HGMV Graduate Award

Funding for both types of awards will be provided to graduate students in the form of reimbursement for travel costs and registration fees for conferences, symposia, workshops, and meetings where they will present their work.

Topics must be relevant to the Holocaust, genocide, mass violence and other systemic human rights violations. Applications accepted on a rolling basis, first consideration will be given to those students who have presented or are scheduled to present their work in the HGMV workshop.

Library awards require prior consultation with an archivist, and incorporation of archive research in the paper.  Archivists are always available for consult via ihrca@umn.edu and ymcaarch@umn.edu.

Please find additional information here.

Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of History invite applications from current doctoral students in the UMN College of Liberal Arts for the Bernard and Fern Badzin Graduate Fellowship in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The Badzin Fellowship will pay a stipend of $18,000, the cost of tuition and health insurance, and $1,000 toward the mandatory graduate student fees. Calls for applications usually posted the beginning of Spring Semester.

Eligibility: An applicant must be a current student in a Ph.D. program in the College of Liberal Arts, currently enrolled in the first, second, third, or fourth year of study, and have a doctoral dissertation project in Holocaust and/or genocide studies. The fellowship will be awarded on the basis of the quality and scholarly potential of the dissertation project, the applicant’s quality of performance in the graduate program, and the applicant’s general scholarly promise.

Please find additional information here.

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies awards fellowships on a competitive basis to support significant research and writing about the Holocaust. The specific fellowship and the length of the award are at the Mandel Center’s discretion.  Stipends range up to $3,700 per month.

The application deadline is November 15, 2016 for the academic year of 2017-2018.

Please find additional information here.

The Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies offers a limited number of fellowships for Ph.D and postdoctoral candidates conducting research on the Holocaust. A Kagan Fellowship award is a maximum of $20,000.

The application deadline is January 3, 2017 for the academic year of 2017-2018.

Please find additional information here.

The Geneva Center for Security Policy and its Geopolitics and Global Futures Programme established a Prize for Innovation in Global Security in order to recognize deserving individuals or organizations that have an innovative approach to addressing international security challenges. The prize is designed to reach across all relevant disciplines and fields. It seeks to reward the most inspiring, innovative and ground-breaking contribution of the year, whether this comes in the form of an initiative, invention, research publication, or organization.

Please find additional information here.

Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century 

By Paul Mojzes

During the 20th century, the Balkan Peninsula was affected by three major waves of genocides and ethnic cleansings, some of which are still being denied today. In Balkan Genocides Paul Mojzes provides a balanced and detailed account of these events, placing them in their proper historical context and debunking the common misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the genocides themselves.

A native of Yugoslavia, Mojzes offers new insights into the Balkan genocides, including a look at the unique role of ethno-religiosity in these horrific events and a characterization of the first and second Balkan wars as mutual genocides. Mojzes also looks to the region’s future, discussing the ongoing trials at the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and the prospects for dealing with the lingering issues between Balkan nations and different religions.Balkan Genocides attempts to end the vicious cycle of revenge which has fueled such horrors in the past century by analyzing the terrible events and how they came to pass.