Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons^™

Interview With Elie Byishimo, Elie Byishimo, Monica Miramontes, Emelia Winterhalter, Drake Seifert

Interviews

Transcript and audio recording of interview conducted with Elie Byishimo. Per the "Methodology" section, the transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. The interview begins at 00:04:07 in the audio recording.

This interview was taken over Zoom and manually transcribed.

Interview With Kalala Shoni, Kalala Shoni, Ezra Schrader

Interviews

Transcript of interview and audio recording conducted with Kalala Shoni. Per the "Methodology" section, the transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. The interview begins at 00:03:00 in the audio recording.

This interview was recorded over Zoom and manually transcribed.

Interview With Alain Muragwa, Alain Muragwa, Ezra Schrader

Interviews

Transcript of interview conducted with Alain Muragwa. Per the "Methodology" section, the transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

This interview was recorded over Zoom and manually transcribed.

Starting Anew: Jewish Immigrants And Refugees Sent To America’S Midwest From Nazi And Post Wwii Germany, Quinn Fabish

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

This paper serves to investigate the reasoning as to why Jewish refugees and immigrants were sent to places in the Midwest. Through the analysis of many primary sources, specifically interviews of Jewish refugees and immigrants, this investigation reveals that the general reasons as to why Jewish immigrants and refugees were sent to the rural Midwest were rooted in economics as well as their assimilation into American society. The rural Midwest offered more potential economic opportunities than other urban areas and allowed Jewish immigrants and refugees to more easily assimilate into American life through various means.

An Education In Hate: The “Granite Foundation” Of Adolf Hitler’S Antisemitism In Vienna, Madeleine M. Neiman

Student Publications

Adolf Hitler’s formative years in Vienna, from roughly 1907 to 1913, fundamentally shaped his antisemitism and provided the foundation of a worldview that later caused immense tragedy for European Jews. Combined with a study of Viennese culture and society, the first-hand accounts of Adolf Hitler and his former friends, August Kubizek and Reinhold Hanisch, reveal how Hitler’s vicious antisemitic convictions developed through his devotion to Richard Wagner and his rejection of Viennese “Jewish” Modernism; his admiration of political role models, Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Dr. Karl Lueger; his adoption of the rhetoric and dogma disseminated by antisemitic newspapers and …

The Stars Kept Shining: The Wartime Diary Of Esther Mathilda Sørensen, Larisa C. Neilson

Senior Honors Theses

In fulfillment of the Liberty University Honors Department Thesis requirement, the following is a creative thesis in the form of an historical fiction novella diary, written in the first person. The story follows the life of Esther, a young Danish woman, as she navigates what it means to be a Jew in World War II era Europe. Though the characters are fictional, the story presents possible real-life experiences for a person living during this time.

The style of this novella is popular among middle and high school teachers and can be an important teaching tool as it is an engaging …

Izaokas (Isaac), William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Izaokas (Isaac), directed by Jurgis Matulevicius.

The Function Of Memory From The Warsaw Ghetto As Presented By The Polin Museum Of The History Of Polish Jews, Hannah M. Labovitz

Student Publications

Because of the extreme challenges they endured within Warsaw Ghetto and the slim chance they had at survival, the Jewish people sought to protect their legacy and leave a lasting impact on the world. They did so by both documenting their experiences, preserving them in what was known as the Oyneg Shabes archives, and by engaging in a bold act of defiance against the Nazis with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, rewriting the narrative of Jewish passivity. With both instances, the POLIN Museum presents these moments of the past and shapes a collective memory based on a Jewish perspective …

Verdad Y Responsabilidad: Los Ejes Nuevos De La Memoria En El Cine Contemporáneo De Guatemala, Grace Bushway

Student Publications

Mucha gente no sabe que hubo un genocidio de gente indígena en Guatemala entre los años 1981-1982 o que el ejército nacional del país cometió actos de tortura y violación contra poblaciones civiles. El gobierno de Guatemala prefiere esa realidad. La conversación sobre la guerra de hace más de treinta años en Guatemala es mínima en ámbitos estatales, sociales y educacionales. Para los sobrevivientes de la guerra y sus hijos, eso crea problemas relacionados con sanarse de los traumas directos e indirectos de la violencia de esa época. En 2019, dos directores guatemaltecos—Jaryo Bustamante y César Díaz—estrenaron películas para dialogar …

Women’S Advocate Or Racist Hypocrite: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink And The Contradictions Of Women In Nazi Ideology, Mary C. S. Frasier

Student Publications

The Reichsfrauenführerin, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, led the National Socialist Women’s League from 1934 until she went into hiding in 1945. During her career in the Nazi Party, she created a female focused sector of the party that promoted pronatalist propaganda, discouraged women from engaging in politics, and urged women to only perform gender-suitable work. In contradiction to her message, Scholtz-Klink was the highest-ranking female political figure and a divorcee, who regularly chose her political career with the Nazi Party over her duties in the private sphere. Although she had little to no political power in the inner circle because of her …

Teaching Our Past To Preserve Our Future: Ignorance And The Insurrection, Haleigh Jacocks

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

No abstract provided.

Welcoming Assistants: Changing Perspectives Of Jewish Workers In The Holocaust, Noah Price

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

This article examines how the Jewish community redeveloped its perspective towards Jews that assisted the Nazis in the Holocaust. These ‘assistants’ include those the Nazis either forced or coerced into helping complete their genocide. It argues that in the time since the Holocaust, survivors moved from a negative opinion of these Jewish workers to understanding their situation and allowing the recording of their survival stories along with other victims of the Holocaust. In examining contemporary works such as diaries or journals and the memoirs survivors published years later, these changed emotions reveal themselves as the victims began to write about …

The Jewish Migration To Mexico During Nazi Germany, Gisela A. Argote

Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry

In response to antisemitic persecution from Nazi Germany and allied states, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe sought asylum, emigrated, applied for visas, and faced deportation. Mexico, under the leadership of President Lázaro Cardenas, a vocal opponent of Fascism who allowed tens of thousands of Spanish-Republican exiles to emigrate to the country, was one potential destination for Central and Eastern European Jews. In fact, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, received thousands of applications from asylum seekers. This paper challenges the image of Mexico as a country offering hospitality to European refugees and evaluates the state’s reluctance to accept Jews …

Cited At Nuremberg: The American Eugenics Movement, Its Influence Abroad, The Buck V. Bell Decision, And The Subsequent Bioethical Implications Of The Holocaust, Bessie Blackburn

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Eugenics was a bioethical movement that captivated many Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century and even into the Progressive era. No event in American history better encapsulates the American eugenics movement than the trial of Carrie Buck and her later forced sterilization. This trial is monumental not only to understanding American eugenic policy, but also international reactions and Nazi Germany’s chilling use of this pseudoscience in the Holocaust. In order to best understand the trial of Carrie Buck, one must look first look at the origins of eugenics, second, the context of the eugenics movement in America and …

The Oldest Post-Truth? The Rise Of Antisemitism In The United States And Beyond, Gerald Steinacher

Faculty Publications, Department of History

Antisemitism, the negative stereotyping and hatred of Jews, has overshadowed Western history for 2000 years. In the 20th century, antisemitism led to the Shoah, the systematic state-sponsored murder of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies. In recent decades, antisemitism diminished significantly in the Western world, and there was hope that this plague would soon be consigned to the past. On the contrary, the past few years have witnessed a drastic increase of antisemitism in Western societies, often paired with far-right activism, racism, and xenophobia. In 2017 in Charlottesville, there were hundreds of marchers giving Nazi salutes, waving …

"A Hussy Who Rode On Horseback In Sexy Underwear In Front Of The Prisoners": The Trials Of Buchenwald’S Ilse Koch, Mark A. Drumbl, Solange Mouthaan

Scholarly Articles

Ilse Koch’s trials for her role in atrocities at the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp served as visual spectacles and primed her portrayal in media and public spaces. Koch’s conduct was credibly rumored to be one of frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. The gendered construction of her sexual identity played a distortive role in her intersections with law and with post-conflict Germany. Koch’s trials revealed two different dynamics. Koch’s actions were refracted through a patriarchal lens which spectacularized female violence and served as an optical space to (re)establish appropriate feminine mores. Feminist critiques of Koch’s trials …

The Last Prisoners Of War: How Nazi-Looted Art Is Displayed In U.S. Museums, Monica May Thompson

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

How art museums approach NLA is important today because much of the public relies on museums for their education. NLA cases are especially controversial because they are not only legal battles, but ethical ones so museums have to be extra careful approaching them. Even if the museum has won the legal battle the public may not see them as winning the ethical one therefore they might want to avoid displaying this information to the public. However, as we can see with the previous websites, it actually looks worse for museums not to be open and honest about their NLA pieces …

Mentality Of The German Middle Class And Nazism: The Activation And Transformation Of Existing Antisemitic And Anti-Liberal Tendencies By Rapid Social Changes, Zhengyang Ji

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Monuments Women And Men: Rethinking Popular Narratives Via British Major Anne Olivier Popham, Elizabeth Campbell

History: Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the work of the American Monuments Men has been celebrated in popular histories and culture, such as bestselling books by Robert Edsel and a feature film directed by George Clooney (The Monuments Men, 2014). While public awareness of Nazi art looting and the courageous work of American cultural officers is long overdue, these popular narratives elide the role played by women and other Western Allies and fail to address the corps’ greatest failure: the incomplete restitution of Jewish assets. This article explores these factors through a case study of British Major Anne Olivier Popham (1916–2018), who served …

“Which Of The People Here Would Suspect That So Much Is Going On In The Mind Of A Teenage Girl?”: Adolescent Resilience In The Holocaust Diaries Of Anne Frank And Renia Spiegel, Jenna Marie Walmer

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this qualitative archival diary study, Holocaust-era diaries were explored for evidence of the resilience of adolescent girls. Adolescent-themed passages were selected from the posthumously published diaries of Anne Frank and Renia Speigel, who kept private diaries while under the constant threat of war and genocide. To explore how the everyday affairs of adolescent development may contribute to resilience in the face of trauma, I used thematic analysis to determine the prevalence and emotional valence of four themes of adolescence: evolving social-relationships, emotional fluctuation, cognitive-identity changes, and physical changes. The emotional valence of the adolescent-themed diary passages was more likely …