Holocaust as Local History: Past and Present of a Complex Relation

Conference Program | Conference Logistics

Holocaust as Local History:
Past and Present of a Complex Relation

June 5 - 8, 2008
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

The conference seeks to examine one of the most crucial aspects of the Jewish Genocide, the way in which it was implemented in specific local contexts and in interaction with local communities. The focus will not only be on the actual events of the Genocide but also on its aftermath. The conference will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece, a city of great symbolic importance to Sephardic Jewry.

Until recently, local contexts were a relatively understudied aspect of the Genocide. It took many decades to realize that many ‘ordinary’ people were involved –in a variety of ways- in the Genocide, and that their role was much more significant than previously thought. The Holocaust historiography has developed a broader agenda that looks into the role of actors such as collaborators, bystanders, local churches, resistance organizations, and others, in their diverse participation in the genocide or the rescue of Jewish populations.

Looking back at the Holocaust and dealing with its most immediate consequences proved to be complicated endeavor in postwar Europe. National priorities, antisemitism, the Cold War, a multitude of local conflicts and interests, and the constraints of collective memory among others, complicated and even impeded the return of surviving Jews in the places they were expelled from. Furthermore, the public perception and collective memory of these events became fragmented, ambivalent, and selective. In certain cases, silence and amnesia seem to have been the decisive elements of the (non) recollection of the Jewish presence.

Thursday June 5, 2008

17.30-18.00: Welcome

18.00-20.00

Plenary Session

Stathis Kalyvas (Yale University)Opening Remarks

Christopher Browning (University of North Carolina)The Holocaust as Local History:
Survivor Memories of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps

Omer Bartov (Brown University)Testimonies as Historical Documents: The Holocaust as Communal Genocide,
East Galicia, 1941-44

20.00-21.00: Reception

Friday June 6, 2008

09.00-11.00
Room A: Grey Zones I: Bystanders, Collaborators, and Perpetrators
Chair: Anita Grossmann

Diana Dumitru (University Ion Creanga)The Holocaust in Bessarabia and Transnistria:
Bringing the Local Population into the Story

László Csosz (University of Szeged)‘Soldiers of the Home Front’: Local citizens and the Holocaust in
a Hungarian County, 1944; A Comparative Case Study

Borbála Kriza (Institut d’Etudes Politiques – Sciences Po, Paris)We Did Not Know That It Would End That Way -
Bystanders of the Holocaust in the Hungarian Town of Koszeg

Room B: Death Marches and Persecutions Chair: Nikos Marantzidis

Marc J. Masurovsky (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)Anatomy of the “Death Marches”, January-May 1945

Simone Giglioti (Victoria University)Visible Victims: Death Marchers as a Local Traffic

Dragan Cvetkovic (Museum of Genocide Victims, Serbia)Persecution of Jews in Independent State of Croatia (ISC) –
An Attempt of Quantification

11.00-11.30: Coffee Break

11.30-13.30
Room A: Grey zones II: Rescuers and Perpetrators
Chair: Tony Molho

Michal Unger (Bar Ilan University)After an Alibi: Hans Biebow and the Rescue of Three Jewish Groups from
the Lodz Ghetto (1944-1945)

Renee Poznanski (Ben Gurion University)The Underground Press in France and the Persecution of the Jews

David Barnouw (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation)Rapenburgerstraat: In the Centre of the Jewish Quarter

Room B: Antisemitim and the Holocaust at the Local Level
Chair: Rena Molho

Gerhard Botz Vienna, (University of Vienna)The Vienna Example: Popular Anti-Judaism, “Negative Social Policy“
and the Organisation of the Persecution of the Jews

Stratos Dordanas (Aristotle University) “Greeks Exterminate Jews”: Anti-Semitism and Ideological National Socialism
in Inter-war Macedonia

Guus Meershoek, (Twente University)Segregating Amsterdam Jewry (1940-1943)

13.30-3.30: Lunch Break

3.30-5.30
Room A: The Holocaust in Greece I
Chair: Hagen Fleischer

George Th. Mavrogordatos (University of Athens)The Greek Case: A Vindication of Assimilation?

Philip Carabot (King’s College)Gentile Responses to the Nazi Persecution and Deportation of Jews:
The Case of Greece

Vassilis Ritzaleos (Aristotle University)The Greek Orthodox Church of Thessaloniki and the Holocaust

Room B: Local Police
Chair: Christopher Browning

Ana Antic (Columbia University)Police Force Under Occupation: The Serbian State Guard and
Volunteers Corps in the Holocaust

Johannes Houwink ten Cate (University of Amsterdam)The Nazi Administrations in Western Europe and the Regular Police
Departments of the States Occupied or Controlled by the Third Reich

Ivan Ermakoff (University of Wisconsin)Contexts and Enforcement: A Comparative Study of the French Police’s
Involvement in the Deportation of Jews in 1942

5.30- 6.00: Coffee Break

6.00-8.00
Room A: The Holocaust in Greece II
Chair: Ioannis Stefanidis

Efi Voutira (University of Macedonia)Holocaust’ and Resistance in WWII Thessaly: Survival Strategies and
Resistance Practices Among Jewish Survivors from Volos during the Occupation

Elli Lemonidou (Paris IV-Sorbonne)The Jews of Xanthi and Komotini. A Lost World

John Sakkas (Aegean University)The Jews of Rhodes and the Holocaust

Room B: Collaborators
Chair: Nikos Zaikos

Tal Brutmann (EHESS)Overcoming “Soft” Vichy: French ultra Collaborators and the “Final Solution”
in Grenoble

Tim Cole (University of Bristol) Collaboration, Compromise and Competition in the Locality:
Implementing the Holocaust in Hungary

Alexander Korb (Humboldt University at Berlin, Germany)Intertwined Genocides: Violence against Serbs, Jews, and Roma
in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-45

08.00-09.00: Reception

Saturday, June 7 2008

09.00-11.30
Room A: Memories and Post-War National Debates
Chair: Henry Rousso

Dominique Frischer (Freelance Researcher)Silence and Reconstruction, Sharing the Holocaust, Three Generations,
Three Countries: France, United States, Israel

Filippo Focardi (University of Padova)The Memory of Holocaust and Fascist’s Anti-Semitism in Italy

Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union)Where is Feldafing?: Local Encounters between Jewish Survivors and Defeated Germans in American Occupied Germany

Jeffrey Olick (University of Virginia)Why the Angel of Revenge was a Jew

Room B: Local and National Complexities 
Chair: Omer Bartov

Martin Dean (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)Ghettoization, Collaboration, and Jewish Property: Comparative
Local Case Studies on the Holocaust in Lithuania, Ukraine, and Poland

Anatoly Podolsky (Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies)Holocaust in Ukraine

Emil Kerenji (University of Michigan)The Holocaust and Serbian History: Troubled Historiographies

11.30-2.30:
A Guided Tour in Jewish monuments in Salonica

2.30-4.15: Lunch Break

4.15-6.15
Room A: The Return and Properties Issues
Chair: Jeffrey Olick

Anne Grynberg (Sorbonne, Paris I University)The Restitution of Properties in France

David Bankier (International Institute for Holocaust Research)Reactions to the Prospective Return of Jews after the Holocaust

H. Klamkova  and K. Kralova (Charles University)From Destruction to Compensation? Reflecting Holocaust in
Postwar Greece and Slovakia

Room B: Memories
Chair: Nikos Demertzis

Mikhail Tyaglyy (Institute of History of Ukraine)Apart from the Jewish Stem: Krimchaks’ Survival Strategies and
Shaping Post-war Identity in a Result of the Holocaust

Joanna Michlic (Lehigh University)The “Raw Memory of War:” The Reading of Early Postwar Testimonies of Children

Andrea Peto (Central European University)Conflicting Memories: History and Remembrance of a Mass Murder
on 15 October, 1944 in Budapest

6.15-6.30: Coffee Break

6.30-8.30
Room A: Nazis and Local Populations
Chair: Dimitris Keridis

Hagen Fleischer (University of Athens)Shoah and Aspects of the ‘Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung’

Evangelos Hekimoglou (Freelance Researcher) Max Merten in Thessalonians Tradition

Bernward Dörner (Centre for Anti-Semitism Studies, Berlin)Within the Country of Perpetrators: The Holocaust and its
Perception by way of Example of the Düsseldorf Region

Room B: Domestic Politics
Chair: Stathis Kalyvas

Jeffrey Kopstein (University of Toronto) and Jason Wittenberg (Berkeley)Primed to Hate? Local Political Milieux and Jewish Persecution in Occupied Poland

Florent Brayard (Centre Marc Bloch)The Policy toward Foreign Jews during the War in Europe:
Toward a Comparison

Jean-Francois Berdah (University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail)Did Franco’s Spain Save the Jews? The Jewish Question in the First Half ofthe 20th Century

Sunday, June 8 2008

09.15-11.15
Room A: Commemoration
Chair: Efi Voutira

Esther Solomon (Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki)Greek Jewish Museums and the Collective Memory of the Shoah

Panagiotis Mpikas (Tellogleio Museum of Contemporary Art)Memorials of the Holocaust: a Monument for the Greek Jews of Thessaloniki

Jovan Byford (Open University, United Kingdom)Remembering and Forgetting the Semlin Judenalger:
Memorialisation of the Holocaust in Serbia 1945-2005

11.15-11.30: Coffee Break

11.30-13.30: Concluding Remarks

Atina Grossmann, Henry Rousso, George Mavrogordatos, Hagen Fleischer,
Stathis Kalyvas
, Jeffrey Olick

Organisers
Civil Wars Study Group
Hellenic Studies Program, Yale University
University of Macedonia

Sponsors
Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris
Hellenic Studies Program, Yale University
Jewish Community of Thessaloniki
University of Macedonia
Goethe Institut, Thessaloniki
Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Thessaloniki
Epikentro Publications

Scientific Committee
Omer Bartov, Brown University
Christopher Browning, University of North Carolina
Stathis Kalyvas, Yale University
Nikos Marantzidis, University of Macedonia
Rena Molho, Panteion University
Henry Rousso, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Organizing Committee
Georgios Antoniou, Yale University
Stratos Dordanas, Aristotle University
Nikos Zaikos, University of Western Macedonia
Dimitris Keridis, University of Macedonia
Nikos Marantzidis, University of Macedonia

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