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.

Memory is a tricky thing. Biased and imperfect, it can be willfully deceitful and innocently forgetful. Collective memory is no different, and is perhaps more problematic in that it is often formed and framed by people and institutions with ulterior motives. Even more importantly, collective memory defines our popular conceptions of history’s meaning.

Popular histories are powerful forces in shaping identity and purpose for all societies. Yet, they rarely do justice to the delicate intricacies of the central questions that the pressing issues of human existence ask of us. Popular history marginalizes some of the most essential questions that we face, and yet, it is often the only history to which many young people are exposed.

With this in mind, the primary role of the high school history teacher must be to expose students to a study of history that allows for asking serious, difficult questions about serious difficult events. The nature of humankind, the justifiable use of military force, definitions of race, the roots and motivations of stereotypes – these have been with us for centuries, they are ambiguous and moral to their core, and absolutely necessary for human development and progress.

Like many history teachers, I begin my year by asking students to consider a series of questions about the nature of history. One of the questions that I always ask is very simple – Why do we study history? Invariably, the first answer from students is that we study history to learn from our mistakes. This answer, to be sure, is justifiable. Yet, students often come to the conclusion that the study of history has several valuable purposes that require deeper reflection and analysis – and they are right.

First, history is about learning from our successes – learning from the times when people have struggled to survive against all odds; when small groups of people have come together to define themselves in the face of adversity and ultimately been victorious. This memory was displayed to me on my second day of class this year when, after having mentioned Auschwitz-Birkenau in our first class, a young man approached me with a picture of a recent visit that he had made to Poland. The image was one of his brother carrying an Israeli flag through the gates of Auschwitz. He said that it served as a reminder that the Jewish people were ultimately victorious over, what he termed, “the worst atrocity in the history of modern man.” He went on to say that the picture reminded him of the commonality of humanity and the commonality of human struggle, since we are still struggling to make sense of this event and its meaning today. This young man had found a repository for his historical identity, taken from what is certainly the most heavily planned, systematic attempt at genocide in recorded history, and applied it to his world – the purpose for the study of history on display in my classroom. This victory, the victory of the Jewish people over absolute tyranny and destruction, is the ultimate testimony to those millions who did not survive – this is their legacy to my student and the millions in the world who draw meaning from the memory of the Holocaust. This, first and before anything else, is why we study the Holocaust.

The second conclusion that my students often come to is the importance of what educators will often refer to as divergent thinking, or the potential to consider ambiguous answers to seemingly simple questions. Answers to questions like the role of collective guilt for all Germans in the Holocaust cannot be answered, or even discussed, without recognizing that societies always have layers of participants who react to things differently. People rarely act collectively in one single way for anything. Recognizing the people, in Germany or Denmark or throughout occupied Europe and beyond, who risked their lives to save others from the horrors of the Nazis is one stark way of showing that human nature is ambiguous. On a larger level, the recognition that the Holocaust, no matter how unique, is only one of multiple genocides in our modern history, and that genocide is not relegated to one region or one ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, can help students come to terms with the realization that we all have the potential to take part in something as gruesome as genocide – this is a humbling realization and should help students consider their own potential, for good and bad, in the world.

The third conclusion that students come to is that history is defined by perspective. When I had the opportunity to attend the Holocaust in European and American Memory Summer Institute at the University of Minnesota in July of this year, one of the most striking discussions for me centered on the different ways in which male and female Holocaust survivors remembered similar experiences. The idea that people who had experienced the same treatment, for the same reason, by the same people could remember things in absolutely different terms was a great example of the necessity for understanding divergent thinking. The recognition that people have different memories and therefore different definitions of the world is a mark of emotional maturity and intellectual development, and is an enormous component in making historical study a creative process – one of purposeful self-exploration and questioning.

The study of the Holocaust is a vehicle to force students to recognize the importance of perspective and ambiguity in the world. It serves as a reminder that even the most heinous acts and tragic experiences have a meaning and a message. It provides a medium with which to illustrate to students that history can be a story about triumph and success. Most importantly, it is a vehicle to force students to grapple with moral abstractions in their own lives. Questions that revolve around collective guilt or the acceptance of harmful stereotypes are things that high school students deal with on a daily basis – they often times know what is right in abstraction, but have trouble projecting these values in the real world. Understanding and discussing these same problems through the historical context of an event like the Holocaust forces students to recognize that these issues are transcendent, that they have been around for a long time, and that they apply to our real world, right now.

Dawson McCall is a Social Studies teacher in Louisiana, who attended the CHGS Summer Institute: Memory of the Holocaust in Europe and America held at the University of Minnesota July 8-11, 2013. A follow up to the institute is scheduled for Saturday, November 9 on the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Commemoration and Memory. Information on the workshop will be posted on the CHGS homepage soon.

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” said Rabbi Hillel, one of the most influential sages and scholars in Jewish history.

It is unlikely that Barak Obama had this phrase of the Talmud in mind last week during the Moscow’s G8 summit. However, he seems to have performed a political interpretation of this often quoted Jewish aphorism when he tried to convince his fellow world leaders of the necessity of joint military action against the criminal Assad regime in Syria.

The figures of the Syrian tragedy are well known. 100,000 people killed in two years, two million refugees living in bordering countries, four million displaced within the country and, only a few weeks ago, a lethal chemical weapons attack against the civilian population, in a clear violation of international law. No other government has dared to cross the line of chemical weapons use since the 1980s. The situation has reached a tipping point and it requires a meaningful response by the international community. But what sort of action should be taken?

It seems we are always fighting the previous genocide. Violence unfolding before our eyes usually lacks the unambiguous quality of retrospective moral outrage, naming and condemnation. It is entangled in a complex constellation of forces and unpredictable developments that lead to the fact that the realpolitik, immediate interests and geopolitical concerns are weighted against human rights ideals.

What will be the consequences of military action in Syria? Have all other measures and means of pressure been exhausted? Will the envisioned bombing raids serve to protect civilians?

On September 11 the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Human Rights Program will host a panel discussion in which Syrian community members, experts and scholars will discuss ways to take action without vast and devastating consequences.

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. 

The startled reaction to the news that Michael Karkoc, an alleged former Nazi is living in Northeast Minneapolis is understandable. To have a Nazi in our midst is unsettling and leads to the larger question of how it is possible for someone who (if found guilty of war crimes) could have lived in the Twin Cities for 70 years undetected.

In terms of what happens next, the United States needs to investigate Karkoc’s denial of military service on the application form he filed in order to immigrate to the United States.

Karkoc was admitted into this country under the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, designed to authorize for a limited period of time the admission into the United States of certain European displaced persons for permanent residence and or other purposes.

After World War II there were more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons between 1945 and 1952 living in DP camps throughout Germany and Austria, waiting to regain their lives after the Holocaust.  At first the thought was to return them to their countries of origin but most had no homes or families to go back to, and antisemitism remained problematic.  The Displaced Persons Act at first was not specific or favorable to the Jewish DP’s and many Jews continued to wait to immigrate to the United States.  It was not until 1950 that the act was amended and Jews had more accessibility to emigrate.  By 1952 80,000 displaced Jews made it to the US with the additional aid of Jewish relief agencies. Of those 80,000 it is believed that roughly three to four hundred made Minnesota their new home.

Life in Minnesota was not easy for the new Jewish immigrants, jobs were hard to come by and the larger community did not quite understand what these refugees had experienced during the war. Most did not speak of their Holocaust experiences until much later, when people began to ask and wanted to hear about what they witnessed.

When the news of Karkoc’s alleged Nazi past appeared on every Minnesota news and media outlet, local Holocaust survivors began to speak up, hoping that if he did indeed commit these crimes against his fellow Ukrainians and Poles, murdering women and children, that he would be brought to justice. Many wondered how he was able to slip into this country under the act that was designed to help people who had been victims of Nazi persecution and could not return home.  As one survivor said, “The fact that he was let into the US and has lived a relatively quiet and happy life is problematic because justice has not been served.”

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.

Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives

Edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld

Dating back millennia, antisemitism has been called “the longest hatred.” Thought to be vanquished after the horrors of the Holocaust, in recent decades it has once again become a disturbing presence in many parts of the world. Resurgent Antisemitism presents original research that elucidates the social, intellectual, and ideological roots of the “new” antisemitism and the place it has come to occupy in the public sphere. By exploring the sources, goals, and consequences of today’s antisemitism and its relationship to the past, the book contributes to an understanding of this phenomenon that may help diminish its appeal and mitigate its more harmful effects.

In August 1941, Winston Churchill noted that, while confronted with the atrocities that his intelligence services had discerned in Europe, the world was faced “with a crime without a name.” The second World War marked efforts to define atrocities and mold cultural memory by distinct institutions, such as the media, judiciary and academia; each of which continue to offer their own unique but overlapping framing.

While it is evident that representations of past atrocities have since influenced responses to more recent acts of bloodshed, the connection between such representations, and their ability to effectively prevent or reduce atrocities, has received little analysis.

On April 5th and 6th, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, hosted the symposium, Representing Genocide: Media, Law and Scholarship, to explore the intersections between journalistic, judicial and social scientific depictions of atrocities, with a focus on cases of the Holocaust, Darfur and Rwanda.

The symposium was organized by the Center’s Director, Alejandro Baer, and Professor of Sociology, Joachim Savelsberg, and made possible by the Wexler Special Events fund for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Center for Austrian Studies, The Center for German and European Studies and several other centers and departments across the university (for a complete list click here).

Seventy-five participants attended the two-day symposium, which featured renowned scholars -in the fields of law, academia, and journalism-speaking to the increasing tension between local and global representations and memories of mass murder. Day one of the symposium opened with an analysis of the term “genocide,” including an exploration of the term’s origins and a discussion on whether the Holocaust could be considered on its own or as a larger framework of genocide.

The afternoon session explored representations of genocide through the lens of law. Specifically, scholars employed historical examinations of the prosecutions of crimes committed during Argentina’s “Dirty War” and the Darfur conflict to inform our normative assessment of those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Examples of prominent Holocaust related trials, notably the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem and the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in Germany, were also analyzed to demonstrate the varying approaches to accountability for mass murder.

Day two of the symposium addressed the wavering depictions of genocide and mass atrocities in the media and the consequences that such representations have on external interventions.

Corresponding with the anniversary of the start of the Rwanda Genocide, the failure of the international media to properly cover and define this horrific massacre was examined, as well as the physical and moral consequences of this neglect.

Scholars also examined how nation states’ own collective memories of genocide, as well as associations with global institutions such as the International Criminal Court, affect the reporting and discourse on the conflict and interventions in Darfur.

Furthermore, scholars addressed the Holocaust paradigm and how it has been contextualized in Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, as well as how the transnational memory of fascism and the Holocaust played a role in Argentina’s “Dirty War” in the 1970s.

These cases demonstrate how cross-historical memory movements can often contain politicalized narratives but also help us to understand the motivations for contemporary mass atrocities. The symposium allowed for a frank exchange that cultivated new ideas on how and when the memory of mass atrocities through distinct institutions can lead to effective anti-genocide policies. For more information about the symposium please click here.

Tracy Baumgardt has been providing program support to CHGS since February, 2013. Prior to this she was working as a Human Rights Field Officer with Peace Brigades International in Kathmandu, Nepal. There she supported at-risk human rights defenders through protective accompaniment, advocacy and capacity building. For almost three years she also served as the Program Coordinator for the Washington D.C. based NGO, Democracy Coalition Project, which conducted research and advocacy related to the advancement of human rights internationally, particularly through United Nations mechanisms. Ms. Baumgardt graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs with a Masters of Public Policy and a minor in Human Rights. 

Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research 

Edited by David Bankier (Author) Iael Nidam-Orvieto (Editor), Dan Michman (Editor).

Dilemmas, silence, active rescue, and passivity are words often associated with Pius XII. “Critics” emphasize the wartime Pope’s failure to condemn Nazism, while “defenders” maintain that Vatican neutrality facilitated rescue activities by the faithful. This publication, which consists of the oral presentations of scholars gathered at Yad Vashem (Israel`s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust) for a groundbreaking international workshop, attempts to present the current state of research on Pius XII and the Holocaust, based on new documentation.

“If Herodotus is the father of history,” wrote renowned historian Yosef Yerushalmi (1932-2009), “the father of meaning in history was the Jews.”  The upcoming Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on April 8th, will give, like every year, this quote its proper significance.

Throughout the liturgical year-cycle the Jewish tradition looks back at the events in the history of the people of Israel not with a particular historical curiosity. Rather, it asks what the events of the past mean for us today. How can the past illuminate our present?

We now know much about the Holocaust. The Shoah has generated more historical research than any other event in Jewish history. Preserving the record of the disaster was a major concern for the survivors and those with whom they shared their worlds. However, survivors also struggled, from the very beginning, to extract some meaning from the events they had lived through and to convey relevant lessons for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Yom HaShoah pays tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It serves, at the same time, as a powerful landmark in the calendar that highlights the ongoing problem of genocide and mass atrocities throughout the world.

This year at CHGS we will commemorate Yom HaShoah by engaging in a cutting edge scholarly symposium on “Representing Genocide.”  Leading thinkers in the field will try to respond to a fundamental and urgent question: When and how can memories of past mass atrocities, embodied in journalistic, judicial and scholarly representations, lead to effective anti-genocide policies? What is the impact of memory on unfolding events of mass violence?

CHGS is grateful for the support received from colleagues, departments, centers and community donors to put together this important symposium.

We look forward to meeting you on April 5th and/or 6th at the University of Minnesota.

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.