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

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

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

What was the effect of shifting borders and/or pre-existing loyalties on the dynamics of violence in the borderlands? How did the experience of violence and occupation reshape interethnic relations and other social relationships in these regions? Can patterns of behavior be identified across the borderlands of Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe? Ultimately, this workshop aims at gathering an unprecedented range of regional, transnational, and multiscalar approaches to the Holocaust in
Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe in order to create a comparative basis for the study of the Holocaust under different occupational regimes, and explore the potential of a borderland approach to the study of the Holocaust.

Date

07.02.2018 - 09.02.2018

Venue

München

Program

Wednesday, 7 February 2018

18.00-20.30: Opening Lecture (Senatssaal LMU) followed by wine reception

Doris Bergen (Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto): Saving Christianity, Killing Jews: German Religious Campaigns and the Holocaust in the Borderlands Greetings, introduction and moderation: Frank Bajohr (Munich), Gaëlle Fisher (Munich), Caroline Mezger (Munich) and Kim Wünschmann (Munich).

Thursday, 8 February 2018

9.00-9.30: Welcome & Introduction

Gaëlle Fisher and Caroline Mezger: The Holocaust in the Borderlands:
Introductory Remarks

9.30 - 10.00: I - Contexts of Social Division in Multiethnic Societies
Chair: Kim Wünschmann (Munich)

How did pre-existing social divisions in multiethnic societies influence
later dynamics of violence under occupation?

- Grzegorz Krzywiec (Warsaw): 'Borderlands' (Kresy) as a Laboratory for
Space without the Others? Eastern Europe, Multi-Ethnic Realm and
'National Revolution' from below and above at the Eve of WWII. The Case
Study of Lubelszczyzna

- Anca Filipovici (Cluj-Napoca): Interethnic Clashes among Students at
the University of Chernovtsy (1930-1940). Daily Life, Propaganda and the
Rise of Anti-Semitism in the Multiethnic Borderland of Bukovina

- Leon Saltiel (Thessaloniki): The Legacy of the Millet as a Factor in
the "Silence" of the Thessaloniki Christian Elites during the Holocaust

11:00-11.30: Coffee break

11.30 - 13.00: II - National Agendas and Regimes of Occupation
Chair: Caroline Mezger (Munich)

How did the different national and imperial agendas of the Axis powers
manifest themselves in regimes of occupation? How did these interact and
how do they compare?

- Tommaso Dell'Era (Viterbo): Italian Imperialism, Albanian Nationalism
and the Holocaust during the Occupation Period (1939-1943)

- Mirna Zakic (Athens, Ohio): 'The soil which drank German blood will
become our living space': Ethnic Germans, Jews, and Serbs in the
Occupied Banat

- Mariana Hausleitner (Berlin): The Germans in the Bukovina and the
Romanian Banat after 1935

13.00-14.30: Lunch break

14.30-16.00: III - Engineering Social Differences: Ideology and
Radicalization

Chair: Kerstin Schwenke (Munich)

How do regimes of occupation reorient or exacerbate social divisions in
multiethnic societies? What are the relationships between ideology,
radicalization, and practices of occupation?

- Winson Chu (Milwaukee, Wisconsin): "... Reich Germans believe in the
German Reich, the Volk Germans believe in the German Volk": Violence and
Intraethnic Hierarchies in the Kriminalpolizei in Lodz/Litzmannstadt

- Goran Miljan (Uppsala): The 'Ideal Nation-State' for the 'Ideal New
Croat' - Fascism and the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia,
1941-1945

- Rachel O'Sullivan (Edinburgh): The Ethnic Germans and Nazi "Colonial"
Expansion in Poland

16.00-16.30: Coffee break

16.30-18.30: IV - Dynamics of Violence and Mobilization
Chair: Christian Schmittwilken (Munich)

Why or why not do people engage in violence? How are societies
mobilized?

- Jason Tingler (Worchester, Massachusetts): Mosaic of Destruction. The
Holocaust and Mass Violence in Chelm, 1939-1944

- Nevena Dakovic (Belgrade): Ujvidek Raid: Holocaust and Interethnic
Violence
- Kateryna Budz (Kyiv): The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the
Holocaust in Galicia (1941-1944)

- Linda Margittai (Szeged): Hungarian-Occupied Vojvodina: The Anatomy of
"Bystander" Behaviors in a Multi-Ethnic Society

Friday, 9 February 2018

9.30-11.00: V - Local Practices and Perceptions of Anti-Jewish
Persecution

Chair: Gaëlle Fisher (Munich)

What were the practices and perceptions of anti-Jewish persecution in
specific localities, and how can we study them?

- Dalia Ofer & Sarah Rosen (Jerusalem): Northern Transnistria:
Ukrainians, Jews, Romanians and Nazi Occupiers as Reflected in the Diary
of Lipman Kunstadt

- Svetlana Suveica (Regensburg): Dealing with Jewish Property in the
Borderlands. Local Public Institutions in Bessarabia during the
Holocaust

- Anna Wylegala (Warsaw): Listening to the Contradicting Voices: Jewish,
Polish and Ukrainian Narratives on the Holocaust and Plunder of the
Jewish Property in Galicia

11.30-13.00: VI - Reckoning with the Holocaust in the Immediate Postwar
Period

Chair: Andrea Löw (Munich)

How did different groups and postwar societies confront the legacies of
the Holocaust in the immediate postwar period? How much visibility did
different groups have and what was their narrative?

- Volha Bartash (Vienna): "The war ended in 1950": German Occupation and
Interethnic Relations in the Belarusian-Lithuanian Border Region through
the Eyes of the Local Roma Community

- Franziska Exeler (Berlin/Cambridge): Personal Responses to the
Aftermath of Nazi Occupation in Post-1944 Soviet Belorussia

- Olha Kolesnyk (Warsaw): Jewish Perception of Soviet Occupation in Lviv
in 1939-1941 (Based on Ego-Documents)

13.00-14.30: Lunch break

14.30-15.45: VII - Conveying Catastrophe in Language and Art

Chair: Anna Ullrich (Munich)

How did people communicate about violence in the postwar period, and to
which effect?

- Miriam Schulz (New York): Of Ablaves, Uksinikes, and Negers. The
Yiddish Language as a Mirror Image of Interethnic Relations and Violence
in the Borderlands

- Irina Rebrova (Berlin/Moscow): "German monsters escaped, but there is
the entire Hitler system on the dock": Literary Representation of the
Soviet Trials against Nazi Perpetrators in the (Post)War Society (the
North Caucasian Case)

15.45-16.15: Coffee break

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

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

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