30 June 2010
Some 35 young Holocaust researchers from across the globe will participate in the annual summer workshop for Holocaust scholars held by Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research beginning next week. The workshop, exploring “The Persecution and Murder of the Jews: A Grassroots Perspective” will bring together scholars from Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It will take place from July 5-13, 2010 at Yad Vashem.
“For many years, the focus of research and conventional wisdom has been on Hitler and the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy,” said Prof. Dan Michman, Chief Historian of Yad Vashem, “But we must remember that the Holocaust took less than 4 years to murder 6 million Jews. The Nazis were in power for only 12 years. It could not have happened without the contribution of the local populations on the grassroots level. This workshop will help us understand what took place in various areas of Europe that facilitated the murder of the Jews.”
Among the topics that will be addressed during the scholarly workshop are, German women perpetrators in the killing fields of Ukraine and Poland in 1941-1944; ‘ordinary Dutchmen’: Dutch Nazi volunteers in Ukraine and Belarus during the Holocaust; Perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders in Greece; Local criminal courts and antisemitic persecutions: The role of the French Judges; and how local Yugoslav partisans viewed the Jewish parachutists from the Yishuv in 1943-1945.
The workshop is taking place in collaboration with the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
The International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem is dedicated to promoting young scholars and innovative insights and disseminating new Holocaust research. The workshop is open to Holocaust researchers by invitation only.
Media interested in covering the workshop are requested to contact the Media Relations Department at 02 644 3410 or media.relations@yadvashem.org.il
