Some Current Holocaust Research

Yesterday I attended the morning session of a day-long conference held at New College, U of Toronto entitled “Holocaust: New Scholars – New Research.” There were a hundred or more people gathered there from Canada, Europe, the United States, and Israel, giving and receiving brief overviews of current research by their authors. Each of the three sections of the morning was in a panel format, with three to five presenters (about ten minutes each,) followed by a discussant who addressed questions or comments to each presenter, then questions from the audience, and, an opportunity for the presenters to speak to the issues raised. A chairperson worked hard at keeping each section to an hour and a half. It has been many years since I have attended such a conference but I felt at home and enjoyed my brief conversations with some of the attendees between sections. Most present were involved in some fashion with research related to the Holocaust; some represented institutions like museums or other bodies that are focused on Holocaust education; there were at least two Holocaust survivors present, both of whom I had an opportunity to speak with because of the simple coincidence that we were sitting close to one another. I also chatted with a lovely young woman from Bonn, Germany who works with museums and other groups, and another from Berlin who was giving a presentation in the afternoon entitled, “The Universal Victim: Representing Jews in European Holocaust Museums.” I regretted not being able to stay for the afternoon session as there were several papers and presenters I was especially interested in.

As I had only heard of the conference a few days earlier I was not as well prepared as I might have been. The individual papers were available to anyone who sought them, a convenience which would have been helpful, especially when listening to the summaries given by some presenters. Each person spoke in English but with a more or less heavy accent, which in a few cases were entirely impenetrable to my ears. Luckily the fellow to my right had printed out some abstracts which he generously shared with me. The variety of papers given illustrated for me once again how varied is the terrain of the Holocaust in its reach and its depth. Here are some examples of the talks that I heard: The first section was focused of reportage. Norman Domeier from the University of Stuttgart is examining the role of foreign correspondents in Europe during the war and looking at why though there was considerable coverage of military issues, that the clearly developing evidence of atrocities and of genocide was vastly under-reported.  Ksenia Kovrigina of the University of Paris is researching the varieties of witness testimonials given in the Soviet territories after the war and the ways that the influence of the Soviet narrative of the war shaped these. Stephanie Benzaquen from Erasmus University in Rotterdam focused on images of the Holocaust from the period of the war and its aftermath to the present in Instagram formats, sent via Twitter and other social media, and the varied meanings of these.

The second session entitled, “A European Project,” delivered the following four pieces of on-going research: Diana Dumitru from the Ion Creanga State University of Moldova spoke about atrocities committed by peasants in Bessarabia against their Jewish neighbours during WWII, looking at the influence between the wars of the right wing Cuzist party upon them. Yuri Radchenko of the Centre for Research of Inter-Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe is examining a variety of issues related to the killing of Jews in the Ukraine by the Ukrainian police, working together with the Nazis. Peter Staudenmeier of Marquette University talked about anti-Semitism in Trieste, Italy as unusually virulent for Italian centres and the work of a particular right-wing political party which had prepared the way for the unusually bad treatment of the Jews there during the war. Finally, Daniijel Matijevic and Jan Kwiatkowski of McGill University spoke of research they conducted in a small Polish township which had housed a slave labour camp during the war. They were struck by the way that memories of what had occurred there were shaped by the ethnicity of their witnesses. Clearly Polish people focussed on the sufferings of their people as the Jewish people did on theirs. It was a case of what they spoke of as “disregard,” a problem each group had of stretching their own awareness and compassion for the evident suffering of the other.

The third section was entitled Militaries. Albert Kaganovitch of the University of Manitoba spoke of the survival rates of Soviet non-Ashkenazi Jews in Nazi prisoner of war camps. One main issue was hiding their ethnicity from the Nazis’ gaze, a possibility because of particular features of their histories. Vojin Majstorovic of the University of Toronto talked about the different narratives given about the Holocaust by Soviet officers in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary after the war and reasons for these differences. Finally, David Wildermuth of Shippensburg State University looked at the ways that survivor testimonies can be used as a way of “fleshing out” other sources such as army reportage of particular episodes during the war.

From this brief overview of the research presented, but a portion of the submissions made to the organizing committee, it is clear that the areas of investigation that are on-going are rich and varied. Being there gave me a glimpse into this world of academe, its fellows and its work. I stood there at its edge, happily wondering at its energy as people continue to regard the events of the past century as truly present and meaningful within our own.