Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons^™

The Nazis, The Vatican, And The Jews Of Rome, Patrick J. Gallo

Purdue University Press Books

On October 16, 1943, the Jews of Rome were targeted for arrest and deportation. The Nazis, the Vatican, and the Jews of Rome examines why—and more importantly how—it could have been avoided, featuring new evidence and insight into the Vatican’s involvement. At the time, Rome was within reach of the Allies, but the overwhelming force of the Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and SS in Rome precluded direct confrontation. Moral condemnations would not have worked, nor would direct confrontation by the Italians, Jewish leadership, or even the Vatican.

Gallo underscores the necessity of determining what courses of actions most likely would have spared …

Wikipedia’S Intentional Distortion Of The History Of The Holocaust, Jan Grabowski, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame …

Soviet Commemoration And Myth-Making Of The Nazi Extermination Camps: Case Studies On Treblinka, Sobibór, And Majdanek, Isaac Bluestein

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Nazi extermination camps of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek, all located in Eastern Europe, are understudied, underdiscussed, and undermemorialized in public and scholarly memory. In this paper, I seek to conduct case studies of these three camps, their histories, and their commemoration efforts. Ultimately, four main factors prevented these camps from achieving the solemn recognizability they deserve and from having their victims’ stories adequately told; little remains of these camps compared to concentration camps in Germany, fewer individuals survived them to emphasize their importance, the Soviet Union possessed near complete control of their study and commemoration, which allowed for them …

The Wehrmacht Experience In World War Ii, Tyler Masterson

Theses and Dissertations

German soldiers who were in the Wehrmacht during World War II faced many different experiences from the beginning of the war when it seemed they were in control to later parts of the war were they were being driven back by the Allies. Along with the different experiences from different times of the war, they also faced different experiences when it came to what front they were fighting on. Fronts and theaters that stretch from North Africa and the Mediterranean Campaign to Eastern Europe and Russia to Western Europe. When it comes to the troops that were fighting in the …

A Summer Of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal For The Hungarian Holocaust, George Eisen

Purdue University Press Books

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets.

The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate …

A United Failure: The Failure Of The United Nations, United States, And Global Community In Preventing And Responding To The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Josh Ratsch

Honors College Theses

The Rwandan Genocide represents a glaring failure of the global community to provide humanitarian protection to targets of ethnic violence and slaughter. The complete indifference displayed by the United Nations provided extremist Hutu leaders with an environment for killing without a threat of foreign intervention. Calls by the leader of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), Roméo Dallaire to reinforce the mission both before and during the slaughter fell upon deaf ears as UN leaders attempted to justify their inaction. Accounts from Rwandan representatives, who at the start of the genocide held a position on the UN Security …

Critique Beyond Judgment: Exploring Testimony And Truth In The Classroom, Sean Sidky

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This essay offers a set of strategies for utilizing the words of survivors and of witnesses to genocide in the classroom. Including the voices of survivors and victims in our classroom conversations about genocide, its impact, representation, and the possibilities for its prevention is crucial to an ethical and wholistic pedagogy of genocide. Discussion of these events in the classroom often finds us confronting questions from students about truth, historical accuracy, authenticity, and authority. Addressing such questions requires careful framing that takes into account student assumptions and cultural discourses about memory and witnessing, as we work with students to develop …

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities Of Space, Time, And Memory In Twentieth-Century War And Genocide, Volker Benkert, Michael Mayer

Purdue University Press Books

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide investigates interconnections between space and violence throughout the twentieth century, and how such connections informed collective memory. The interdisciplinary volume shows how entangled notions of time and space amplified by memory narratives led to continuities of violence across different conflicts creating “terrortimes” and “terrorscapes” in their wake. The volume examines such continuities of violence with the help of an analytical framework built around different themes. Its first part, spatial and temporal continuities of violence, looks at contested spaces and ideas of national, ethnic, or religious homogeneity that …

Bibliography For Charlotte Salomon Display, Ruby Blakesleay

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to accompany a display about Charlotte Salomon in September 2022 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University. This display was created in partnership with the Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library and the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education.

“I Held On At Any Price”: Victim Self-Preservation In The Sonderkommando In Auschwitz And Treblinka, Jessica Christina Foster

All Theses

Many Holocaust victims have expressed uneasiness or even shame regarding the actions they took to stay alive in the death camps. These acts of self-preservation were usually humiliating and often came at the expense of their fellow victims. This comes out most clearly in the testimonies of the members of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Writers such as Filip Müller, Zalmen Gradowski, and Richard Glazar recount how they survived the lethal environment of the camp by appropriating the food, clothing, and valuables of the people murdered in the gas chambers. Although most scholars have interpreted these testimonies, and the …

Testimony, Violence, And Silence: An Examination Of Agamben And His Critics, Yagmur Uygarkizi

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This paper investigates the difficulties faced by survivors of atrocities in testifying. I work on the case of female victims of domestic torture as reported by Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald. The starting point is Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz with his discussion on Primo Levi’s paradox and the testis/superstes/auctor distinction. I build on his nuances while arguing that he has not looked enough into power dynamics that render one speechless. “Unspeakable violence” refers simultaneously to incapacity and not being allowed to speak. Pain renders the victim speechless; perpetrators distort language and speak over survivors. Victims are often not allowed …

Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. Collection, Tara O’Donnell, Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of newspaper volumes, illustrated magazines, lantern slides, and 2 pamphlets donated by Dr. Cynthia H. Enloe. The materials were collected by the donor’s father Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. in 1930s Germany.

The 4 newspaper volumes (February 1936- June 1936) belong to 4 publishers in Frankfurt, Munich, and Heidelberg: Volksgemeinschaft Heidelberger Beobachter, General Anzeiger der Stadt Frankfurt, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Munchner Illustrierte Presse. The 10 magazine volumes (June 1936-May 1937) belong to 3 publishers in Munich and Berlin: Munchner Illustrierte Presse, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Illustrierter Beobachter. These periodicals reveal the increasing influence of Nazi …

Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. Collection, Tara O'Donnell, Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of newspaper volumes, illustrated magazines, lantern slides, and 2 pamphlets donated by Dr. Cynthia H. Enloe. The materials were collected by the donor’s father Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. in 1930s Germany.

The 4 newspaper volumes (February 1936- June 1936) belong to 4 publishers in Frankfurt, Munich, and Heidelberg: Volksgemeinschaft Heidelberger Beobachter, General Anzeiger der Stadt Frankfurt, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Munchner Illustrierte Presse. The 10 magazine volumes (June 1936-May 1937) belong to 3 publishers in Munich and Berlin: Munchner Illustrierte Presse, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Illustrierter Beobachter. These periodicals reveal the increasing influence of Nazi …

Hannah Arendt And The Lives Of The Female Intellectual Celebrity: Public Imagery And Storytelling Before And Since 1995, Gabrielle G. Johansson

Senior Theses

This thesis explores the lives of Hannah Arendt, specifically her image as a celebrity intellectual before 1995 and variant Arendtian protagonists which arose after 1995, with the publishing of Elżbita Ettinger’s Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger. Ettinger’s book was the first of its kind to explore their love letters and create from them a narrative of scandal, passion, and paradox. Before 1995, Arendt’s image was secure as a well-respected philosopher and guide for Vergangenheitsbewältigung. After 1995, Arendt’s image and legacy fragmented as artists and academics tried to make sense of how the celebrated philosopher could have had an affair with …

Pathway To The Shoah: The Protocols, "Jewish Bolshevism", Rosenberg, Goebbels, Ford, And Hitler, David M. Crowe

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

In the dark months after the defeat at Stalingrad in 1943, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s strident, virulently anti-Semitic propaganda minister, wrote in his diary that he had “devoted exhaustive study to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” despite the fact that some argued that “they were not suited to present-day propaganda.” After rereading them, he concluded that “we can use them very well,” since The Protocols were “as modern today as they were when published for the first time.” The same day, May 13, 1943, he met with Hitler, who told his propaganda minister that he thought they …

"They Will Change The Situation Immediately": Perpetrator Subgroups And Germany's Genocidal Practices In Southwest Africa, James Michael Thaxton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The genocide of the Herero tribe in German Southwest Africa illuminates the horrors of colonialism broadly and of German settler colonialism more specifically. I contend that the perpetrators of this event can be separated into two broad subgroups, the Old Africans and the Metropole Soldiers, distinguished by their intentions, exploitative and exterminatory respectively, concerning the indigenous tribes. Those intentions were formed over varying lengths of time but are the result of either firsthand experience with the racial hierarchy in the colony or relying on information and misinformation relayed to the metropole. Utilizing primarily letters, diaries, journals, and postcards, I argue …

Aspects Of The Holocaust During The Slovak Autonomy Period (October 6, 1938, To March 14, 1939), Madeline Vadkerty

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Antisemitism was not a new phenomenon in Slovakia and can be traced back to the Middle Ages and beyond. Looking at the more recent past, after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867, Jews became equal citizens in the eyes of the state. The Hungarian Parliament passed an Act of Emancipation for Jews that same year, mainly for the purpose of economic development, which was beneficial for the Jewish population. A year later, Hungary's Nationality Act was issued as part of an active policy of magyarization (Hungarianization). However, it did not affect Jews, who were considered a religious group and not a …

Kalmar Family Diaries (2021.01), Robyn Conroy, Lamisa Muksitu, Tara O'Donnell

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

Karl Kalmar (September 17, 1871 (Vienna, Austria) – December 26, 1942 (Theresienstadt)) and Margarethe Kalmar (Pollak) (December 5, 1881 (Vienna, Austria) – After May 16, 1944 (KZ Auschwitz)). They had two sons Paul Kalmar (May 31, 1908 (Vienna, Austria) – August 3, 1977 (Scotland, UK)) and George Otto Kalmar (November 16, 1913 (Vienna, Austria) – November 12, 1994 (Copake, NY)).

George Kalmar studied painting at the Kunstgewerbschule (now University of Applied Arts) in Vienna. He married Vera Rosa Kalmar (Raschkes) (August 24, 1914 (Vienna, Austria) – August 24, 1988 (Acton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts)), a fellow artist, on July 10, 1938. …

Nazi Propaganda Collection (2020.01), Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection contains images, newspapers and magazines related to the Nazi Party's control of Germany.

Gocthag (Armenian Cochnak) Periodical Collection, Hasmik Grigoryan, Lamisa Muksitu

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

Historical/Biographical Note:

The Rose Library is the beneficiary of a valuable Armenian language weekly donated to the Strassler Center by George Aghjayan, Director of the Armenian Historical Archives and chair of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Central Committee of the Eastern United States. The Gotchnag periodical collection is comprised of 41 incomplete volumes (1908 to 1956). The Reverend Herbert Allen, an American missionary, founded Gotchnag (meaning Church Bell) in Boston in 1900 and served as its first editor. Sponsored by the American Missionary Association and the Armenian Protestant Church in America, Gotchnag represented the Protestant Armenian community.

Scope and Content …

Promoting Democracy And Penance: The United States, Western Europe, And German Memory Of The Holocaust, Mathew Greenlee, Elizabeth Campbell

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

This research, using the writings of German and international intellectuals, journalists, and politicians, explores the late-twentieth-century German memory of the Holocaust and demonstrates the ways it was influenced by the international community. The path of this development was rocky and uncertain, with historical revisionism, denialism, and unchallenged taboo, but also sincere historical engagement. Reflecting a broader trend in the field of history, this work emphasizes the influence of the transnational in cultural shifts; rather than depict the German collective memory as static, or solely domestic, it seeks to demonstrate the influence of international actors, beliefs, and ideas at major inflection …

The Holodomor: Historical Perspectives On The Ukraine Famine Of 1932-33, Melissa Betts

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I.Synthesis Essay………………………………. 3

II.Primary Documents and Headnotes……….. 30

III.Textbook Critique……………………………...42

IV.New Textbook Entry…………………………...44

V.Bibliography………………………………….....47

Barry Hoffman Nazi Postcard Collection, Robyn Conroy, Lamisa Muksitu

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of postcards that are connected to the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was …

Theodor Eicke And His Contributions To The Nazi Party: An Essay On The Development Of The Nazi Concentration Camp System And Ss-Totenkopfdivision, Erin Jackson

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project will focus on Theodor Eicke, and how he shaped the Nazi Party. Eicke is responsible for many key identifiers of the Nazi Party: the concentration camp system, the punishment system within concentration camps, the usage of prisoner labor, Shutzstaffel [SS] formations and indoctrinations, and other organizational schemes of the Nazi Party. This essay will examine Eicke’s background and his contributions to the Nazi Party as Dachau Camp Comandante, Camp Inspectorate, and Commander of the Waffen-SS Death Head Division, and how each of these components contributed to greater Nazi violence and the Final Solution.

Seeing Forced Isolation Through New Eyes: Covid-19, Anne Frank, And The Violence Of The Nation-State, Anna Raines

CMC Senior Theses

In my senior thesis, I explore the social, political, and cultural effects and consequences of forced isolation. Forced isolation is a strategy adopted by governments in order to deal with a range of issues in contemporary history, often resulting in exclusionary practices, the redefinition or assertion of national sovereignty and nation-state boundaries, contagion, detention, and imprisonment. As a consequence of these varied processes and actions, when an individual or a social group is forced into an isolated space and ostracized from society, they are cast out of routine socialization, and the effects of this can endure even if a return …

The Holocaust In Slovakia: The Deportation Of 1942 Through The Prism Of Oral History, Peter Salner

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

On October 28, 1918, after the end of the Great War, Slovakia became part of the Czechoslovak Republic. Two decades later, on October 6, 1938, the country’s political leadership declared autonomy, and within a few months, on March 14, 1939, the Slovak National Assembly voted for the establishment of an independent state. Already during the period of autonomy, the government adopted anti-Jewish legislation (this trend would continue throughout the brief lifespan of the new state) aimed at gradually shutting Jews out of social and economic life. This state-sponsored persecution of the Jews culminated in mass deportations which began in 1942. …

Arts & Literature: Making Art Out Of History’S Tragedies—An Interview With Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Sanford M. Jacoby

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a Polish poet and musician. Here he reflects on the violence perpetrated in Poland during the Second World War, and the dualities of the Polish experience. Is it possible for art to reckon with the darkness, free of melodrama and kitsch?

Methods Of Memorialization: Holocaust Commemoration In The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Kylee Bolinger

University Honors Theses

Memorials, both formal and informal, both private and public, have long participated in the pursuit to honor the victims of tragedy, disaster, or genocide. Memorial museums serve both to memorialize victims and to foster an environment conducive to reflection and education about these stories. Such memorial museums have especially made their mark after one of the most notable and devastating genocide events in history: the Holocaust in twentieth-century Europe. This thesis examines how memorialization methods utilized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) make up the American interpretation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the concept typically applied to how Germans deal …

The Work Of The Nazi Special Services Among The Protestants Of The Reichkomissariat Ukraine (According To The Top-Secret Materials Of The Nkvd-Nkgb), Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Studying the work of Nazi special services among the Protestant denominations of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine during World War II is an under-explored aspect of modern historical science. The article attempts to fill this gap by covering the work of the Nazi secret services, Gestapo1 and Sicherheitsdienst (SD),2 among Evangelical Christians (EC), Baptists (B), and Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals, CEF) of the RKU. The basis of this study is the recently declassified documents and archival materials of the KGB of the USSR. The article first provides a brief analysis of the activities of the Soviet intelligence services (NKVD3) …

The Allies And The Holocaust, Mark Granicke

Undergraduate Research Symposium

During World War II, Nazi Germany carried out one of the most atrocious crimes in human history, the Holocaust. This systematic extermination of approximately 6 million Jews, along with other groups between 1941-1945, has become a focal point of modern human history. It is difficult to grasp the sheer magnitude of the undertaking by the Nazis. One question often asked is why the Allies did not do more to prevent this massacre. Were they simply ignorant of the entire event during the war? Knowing today the sheer magnitude of the Holocaust, it is difficult to believe knowledge of it would …