Early writings on the Holocaust: French-Polish transnational circulations (original) (raw)
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Growing in the Shadow of Antifascism : Remembering the Holocaust in State-Socialist Eastern Europe, 2022
In this article, I analyze how antifascist ideology and political propaganda interfered with an emerging Holocaust memory in the GDR of the late 1950s and 1960s. I place three books that the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw published in cooperation with East German publishers at the center of this analysis: The diary collection Im Feuer vergangen (Gone with the Fire), Ber Mark’s Der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) and the document compilation Faschismus—Getto—Massenmord (Fascism—ghetto—mass murder). Rather than the content of these books, I analyze how they were introduced to East German readers; received in the media; perceived in society; and used for educational projects, documentaries, and further artistic reflection on the Holocaust. I will show that the perception of these books, which publishers labeled as “antifascist literature” and reviews in East German Press presented as part of campaigns against Nazi criminals in West Germany, ultimately exceeded superficial propagandistic purpose.
These participants were mostly PhD candidates and early post-docs. Throughout the seminar they gained insight into new research trends and methodological challenges. Lectures, round table discussions as well as opportunities to explore the city itself provided participants an understanding of the debate and controversy surrounding the question of how to remember the Holocaust in Budapest and – more broadly – Central Europe. The seminar also provided a platform for participants to present and discuss their research and learn more about the EHRI project and its various offerings. The seminar opened with a roundtable discussion focused on Holocaust Research in Hungary and Poland. Ferenc Laczó, Andrea Petö, Andrea Löw, Jakub Leociak and Jakub Petelewicz discussed the current state of research in their respective countries, gave insight into their own research and shared personal stories about their interest in working in the eld of Holocaust studies. Afterwards, Ferenc Laczó and Jakub Leociak took an even closer look at the historiography and (often as a result) the methodological challenges in Holocaust research in Hungary, respectively Poland. While Andrea Löw and Karel Berkhoff talked about the challenges and benets that the use of photographs present for scholarly works, Nicolai Zimmermann demonstrated how useful it is to read German documents properly – and to pay attention to details like the color of the pen used for signing these documents. Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano presented a number of examples of how the use of historical cartography and the analysis of large datasets can enable researchers to ask new questions in the eld of Holocaust Studies. In their presentations on the International Tracing Service and the Visual History Archives of the USC Shoah Foundation, Ildikó Barna and Andrea Szőnyi provided two examples of major international institutions where sources crucial for almost every aspect of the Holocaust studies eld can be found.
2023
In December 1945, in the introduction to the first edition of his monograph The Destruction of the Jews of Lwow, Philip Friedman expressed his sense of urgency for Holocaust scholarship – an urgency due in part to the growing number of trials of war criminals. As a trained historian and Holocaust survivor, Friedman hoped that every new publication addressing the crimes against Jews would fight fascism ‘putting a nail in the coffin of this religion of hatred and ideology of genocide.’ During his time as director of the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, his understanding of the importance of Holocaust scholarship was shared by other survivor scholars all throughout Europe. Working in diverse political frameworks and relying on communal support, these men and women helped build the foundations of documentation and research centres, developed methodologies, examined primary sources, and reflected on some of the challenges of the emerging field. This conference seeks to open a discussion about the crucial first decade of institution building, methodological experimentation, and political negotiations around the study of the Hurban as a European Jewish catastrophe. It will follow up on recent research that surveys pioneering scholars, collective projects, institutions, and publications. The conference will focus on the historical contexts of survivors’ initiatives, their entanglements, their modes of communication within the Jewish community and beyond, their search for an appropriate language and methodology, and their efforts to preserve and create historical sources and their exploring of different disciplinary approaches. It is the aim of the conference to reformulate these questions in an extended and comparative perspective of the European aftermath of the Second World.