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Wolf Gruner

University of Southern California, History, Faculty Member

University of Southern California, USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, Director

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Wolf Gruner received his PhD in History in 1994 from the Technical University Berlin as well as his Habilitation in 2006. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Women’s Christian University Tokyo and the Desmond E. Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness at Webster University in St. Louis. He is the author of 10 books on the Holocaust, among them “Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims” (Cambridge University Press, pb 2008) and the prizewinning "Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses" (Berghahn Books 2019), as well as over 80 academic articles and book chapters. He also coedited two books, most recently with Thomas Pegelow-Kaplan "Resisting Persecution. Jews and their Petitions during the Holocaust" (Berghahn Books 2020). Gruner also published „Los Parias de la Patria“. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia 1825-1890”, in Spanish with Plural Editores, Bolivia, in 2015. His most recent book is: "Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany" (Yale University Press, forthcoming, August 2023).

He is a member of the academic committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. since 2017, and co-founder and member of the Executive Committee of the Consortium for Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies, since 2019.

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Michaela Raggam-Blesch

University of Vienna

Jean Sénat Fleury

Benedetta Carnaghi

Durham University

Newcastle University

Justine Jerusalem

California State University, Fullerton

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Books by Wolf Gruner

Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale UP 2023) Introduction full text

For a wider audience, this book tells five astonishing stories of German Jewish men and women of ... more For a wider audience, this book tells five astonishing stories of German Jewish men and women of different ages who individually resisted Nazi persecution in different ways. After more than 12 years of research, I can show with hundreds of case that individual resistance of Jewish men and women, young and old, ranged from disobeying anti-Jewish laws and contesting anti-Jewish propaganda to protesting persecution in public and physical self-defense against attacks. These accounts dramatically challenge the misconceived, but still widespread idea of the Jews as passive victims in Nazi Germany.

Wolf Gruner/Steven Ross (eds.), New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison (Casden Annual, Vol. 17), West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press 2019, 366 pages.

by Wolf Gruner and Steven Ross

On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leadership unleashed an unprecedented orchestrated wave of viole... more On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leadership unleashed an unprecedented orchestrated wave of violence against Jews in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, supposedly in response to the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a young Polish Jew, but in reality to force the remaining Jews out of the country. During the pogrom, Stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and ordinary Germans murdered more than a hundred Jews (many more committed suicide) and ransacked and destroyed thousands of Jewish institutions, synagogues, shops, and homes. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps.

Volume 17 of the Casden Annual Review includes a series of articles presented at an international conference titled “New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison.” Assessing events 80 years after the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of 1938, contributors to this volume offer new cutting-edge scholarship on the event and its repercussions. Contributors include scholars from the United States, Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom who represent a wide variety of disciplines, including history, political science, and Jewish and media studies. Their essays discuss reactions to the pogrom by victims and witnesses inside Nazi Germany as well as by foreign journalists, diplomats, Jewish organizations, and Jewish print media. Several contributors to the volume analyze postwar narratives of and global comparisons to Kristallnacht, with the aim of situating this anti-Jewish pogrom in its historical context, as well as its place in world history.

Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust. Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner. New York: Berghahn Books 2020, 262 pages

by Wolf Gruner and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

Introduction, 2020

During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective peti... more During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies and demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical sources. New research on the Greater German Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, France, Romania and Hungary illuminates how European Jews resorted to a broad range of entreaties to reassert their agency, reclaim their identity and contest or even resist the mounting discrimination and persecution.

Introduction
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Chapter 1. To Not “Live as a Pariah”: Jewish Petitions as Individual and Collective Protest in the Greater German Reich
Wolf Gruner

Chapter 2. “Did We Not Shed Our Blood for France?” Identity and Resistance in Entreaties for the Jewish Internees of Occupied France, 1940–44
Stacy Renee Veeder

Chapter 3. Honorary Czechs and Germans: Petitions for Aryan Status in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Benjamin Frommer

Chapter 4. Legal Resistance through Petitions during the Holocaust: The Strategies of Romanian Jewish Leader Wilhelm Filderman, 1940–44
Stefan C. Ionescu

Chapter 5. Attempts to Take Action In a Coerced Community? Petitions to the Jewish Council in the Lodz Ghetto during World War II
Svenja Bethke

Chapter 6. Petitioning Matters: Jews and Non-Jews Negotiating Ghettoization in Budapest, 1944
Tim Cole

Chapter 7. Global Jewish Petitioning and the Reconsideration of Spatial Analysis in Holocaust Historiography: The Case of Rescue in the Philippines
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

Chapter 8. Petitioning for “Equal Treatment”: The Struggles of Intermarried Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany
Maximilian Strnad

Conclusion
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Appendix: European-Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust

The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses, New York: Berghahn 2019, 441 pages

Introduction chapter , 2019

Prior to Hitler’s occupation, nearly 120,000 Jews inhabited the areas that would become the Prote... more Prior to Hitler’s occupation, nearly 120,000 Jews inhabited the areas that would become the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; by 1945, all but a handful had either escaped or been deported and murdered by the Nazis. This pioneering prizewinning study gives a definitive account of the Holocaust as it was carried out in the region, detailing the German and Czech policies, including previously overlooked measures such as small-town ghettoization and forced labor, that shaped Jewish life after 1939. Drawing on extensive new evidence, the book demonstrates how the persecution of the Jews was the result of complex actions by German authorities in Prague and Berlin as well as the Czech government and local authorities. It also illuminates the individual and collective reactions and resistance efforts of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia.

“Whoever is working on the National Socialist persecution of the Jews won’t be able to ignore Wolf Gruner’s work.” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“This study is stimulating, closes a gap in scholarship and opens up a wide range of new sources.” • Sehepunkte

“It should be considered as the standard work on this topic.” • Historische Zeitschrift

WINNER OF THE 2017 SYBIL HALPERN MILTON MEMORIAL BOOK PRIZE FROM THE GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION, 2017 YAD VASHEM INTERNATIONAL BOOK PRIZE FOR HOLOCAUST RESEARCH - FINALIST

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Czechoslovak Republic and its Minorities
 Chapter 2. Annexation: Violence, Flight and Emigration Ban
Chapter 3. German Expulsion and Czech Persecution 
Chapter 4. The War and Greater German Deportation Plans 
Chapter 5. Reorientation, Ghettoization and Protest 
Chapter 6. Local versus Central Persecutory Initiatives
Chapter 7. Isolation, Forced Labour and Opposition 
Chapter 8. Repression, Deportation and Resistance 
Chapter 9. Transports, Theft, Forced Labour and Flight
Chapter 10. Those Left Behind and the End of the War

Conclusion

Appendix: Tables

Bibliography
Index

Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2016, 430 pages

Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association 2017 for the best book... more Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association 2017 for the best book in Holocaust Studies in 2015-2016; Yad Vashem International Book Prize in Holocaust research 2017 for the best book in 2015-2016, Finalist; Prize for one of the most outstanding German studies in humanities and social sciences in 2017 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, the VG WORT and the German Foreign Office.

Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Local Initiatives, Central Decisions, Jewish Responses 1938-1945

This book in German (soon to be published in English and Czech) is the first authoritative account on the persecution of the Jews in the Czech part of former Czechoslovakia after the 2005 book by Lidia Rothkirchen. Yet, my book analyses for the first time systematically the mutual dynamic between German and Czech, national, regional and local perpetrator policies, demonstrating Czech radicalizing initiatives and thus ending the legend of sole German anti-Jewish policies and pointing to the importance of local and regional factors and institutions. The book is also able to show how these diverse policies impacted the Jewish communities and people, based on a broad range of new sources that include the entire set of weekly reports of the Prague Jewish community to Eichmann from July 1939- Summer 1942 plus video testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation. These sources led to the discovery of many new facts, for example about an early wave of gettoization in dozens of Czech towns starting in spring of 1940 that mirrors the development in Poland long before the creation of the Terezin ghetto, but also about the creation of Jews houses in Prague, and the forgotten origin of the yellow star measure in Prague in 1941 etc. Always comparing the Protectorate development with policies in Vienna, Germany and Poland, the book speaks to the overlooked importance of the Protectorate for the understanding of the development of the Holocaust in Europe. One more important element of this new account are several subchapters exploring a wide range of active individual Jewish resistance acts that change our perspective of how Jews and Jewish communities responded to the persecution.

Über die zentrale Rolle des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren bei der Radikalisierung der Judenverfolgung in Europa.

Von den über 118.000 im März 1939 in Böhmen und Mähren lebenden Juden konnten bis Oktober 1941 nur etwa 25.000 flüchten. Seit der Errichtung des Protektorats radikalisierten tschechische und deutsche Behörden die antijüdische Politik. Sie beraubten die Juden ihres Eigentums, ghettoisierten sie, zogen sie zur Zwangsarbeit heran und deportierten sie schließlich nach Theresienstadt, bevor viele von dort in die Vernichtungslager verschleppt wurden. Rund 80.000 tschechische Juden fielen dem Holocaust zum Opfer.
Die richtungsweisende Studie zeigt, dass die Politik nicht allein von Berlin aus gesteuert, sondern oft von der tschechischen Regierung oder lokalen Behörden vorangetrieben wurde. Prager Initiativen beförderten, wie in der Frage der Kennzeichnung der Juden 1941, sogar zentrale Entscheidungen im Deutschen Reich oder anderen besetzten Gebieten. Das Protektorat nimmt damit eine bisher verkannte wichtige Zwischenstellung in der Radikalisierung der antijüdischen Politik ein.
Anhand der bislang unbekannten Wochenberichte der Jüdischen Gemeinde Prag an Adolf Eichmann kann der Autor die Auswirkungen auf das Leben der jüdischen Bevölkerung erstmals detailliert analysieren.

The Persecution of the Jews in Berlin 1933-1945. A Chronology of Measures by the Authorities in the German Capital, Translation (updated) of the 2nd substantially revised and expanded edition, Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors 2014, 200 pages (full text)

A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and ot... more A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and other perpetrator agencies against the Berlin Jews. The day by day chronicle, based on many hitherto unknown sources, provides the reader with a detailed and graphic picture of how the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of public life unfolded over time and who was responsible for it. The introduction discusses the overlooked importance of local institutions for the radicalization of the persecution in the capital of the Third Reich, yet also touches upon the reactions and resistance of the Jews.

Parias de la Patria. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia (1825-1890) (Parias de la Patria. The myth of the liberation of the indigenous people in the Bolivian Republic), La Paz, Bolivia: Plural Editores 2015, 345 pages. (Full text)

En el presente estudio se demuestro por primera vez de manera sistemática e integral la exclusión... more En el presente estudio se demuestro por primera vez de manera sistemática e integral la exclusión estatal por motivos raciales que conocieron aymaras y quechuas desde la independencia del dominio colonial español, una exclusión en la que enraízan tanto conflictos históricos como actuales de la sociedad boliviana, de modo similar al de otros países latinoamericanos poscoloniales. Frente a los supuestos de la investigación realizada hasta ahora, no obstante, los resultados demuestran que la discriminación estatal de la mayoría indígena en el siglo XIX no debe ser entendida como una hipoteca colonial de la República, sino como uno de sus elementos constitutivos a largo plazo, que sirvió a la cohesión y la consolidación del poder de la minoría criolla.

The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945, coedited with Joerg Osterloh, Berghahn Books New York 2015

Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The... more Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The contributors to this volume analyze the evolving anti-Jewish policies in the annexed territories and their impact on the Jewish population, as well as the attitudes and actions of non-Jews, Germans, and indigenous populations. They demonstrate that diverse anti-Jewish policies developed in the different territories, which in turn affected practices in other regions and even influenced Berlin’s decisions. Having these systematic studies together in one volume enables a comparison - based on the most recent research - between anti-Jewish policies in the areas annexed by the Nazi state. The results of this prizewinning book call into question the common assumption that one central plan for persecution extended across Nazi-occupied Europe, shifting the focus onto differing regional German initiatives and illuminating the cooperation of indigenous institutions.

Gedenkort. Rosenstraße 2-4: Internierung und Protest im NS-Staat, hrsg. von der Topographie des Terrors,, Hentrich&Hentrich Verlag Berlin 2013

co-ed. with Jörg Osterloh: Das „Großdeutsche Reich“ und die Juden. Nationalsozialistische Verfolgungspolitik in den „angegliederten“ Gebieten (The Greater German Reich and the Jews), Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag 2010, 440 pages

Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933-1945: eine Chronologie der Behördenmassnahmen in der Reichshauptstadt

Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Racial Aims (1938-1944), Cambridge University Press: New York 2006, 322 pages Revised Paperback edition 2008

Forced labor was a key feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and shaped the daily life of almost eve... more Forced labor was a key feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and shaped the daily life of almost every Jewish family in occupied Europe. For the first time, this book systematically describes the implementation of forced labor for Jews in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and the various occupied Polish territories. As early as the end of 1938, compulsory labor for Jews had been introduced in Germany and annexed Austria by the labor administration. Similar programs subsequently were established by civil administrations in the German-occupied Czech and Polish territories. At its maximum extent, more than one million Jewish men and women toiled for private companies and public builders, many of them in hundreds of now often-forgotten special labor camps. This study refutes the widespread thesis that compulsory work was organized only by the SS, and that exploitation was only an intermediate tactic on the way to mass murder or, rather, that it was only a facet in the destruction of the Jews.

(ed.): Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, part I, Vol 1: Das Deutsche Reich 1933 bis 1937 (Collection of primary Holocaust documents on Germany 1933-1937), Oldenbourg Verlag: Munich 2008, 811 pages

Widerstand in der Rosenstraße. Die Fabrik-Aktion und die Verfolgung der „Mischehen“ 1943

Öffentliche Wohlfahrt und Judenverfolgung: Wechselwirkungen lokaler und zentraler Politik im NS-Staat (1933-1942)

Zwangsarbeit und Verfolgung: Österreichische Juden im NS-Staat 1938-45

Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden: Zur Zwangsarbeit als Element der Verfolgung 1938-1943

Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933-1945

Articles and Book Chapters by Wolf Gruner

My unorthodox path. Toward integrative, interdisciplinary, and comparative Holocaust studies

Advancing Holocaust Studies, ed. and introd. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, New York: Routledge 2021, 2020

What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies—what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust... more What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies—what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust for—in such dire straits? Vast resources support study and memorialization of the Holocaust. What assumptions govern that investment? What are its major successes and failures, challenges and prospects? Across thirteen chapters, Advancing Holocaust Studies shows how leading scholars grapple with those tough questions.

Defiance and Protest. A Comparative Micro-Historical Re-evaluation of Individual Jewish Responses towards Nazi Persecution, in: Claire Zalc/Tal Bruttmann (eds.), Microhistories of the Holocaust, New York: Berghahn Books 2017, pp. 209-226.

Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is largely understood as rare armed group activities in th... more Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is largely understood as rare armed group activities in the Nazi occupied East, for example ghetto uprisings or partisan activities. By contrast, this research focuses on forgotten individual acts of resistance, like the case of Hertha Reis, who protested in plain daylight against the persecution in 1941, a few months before the mass deportation started in the capital of the Third Reich. She exclaimed in front of the Berlin courthouse “We lost everything. Because of the damned government, we finally lost our home, too. This thug Hitler, the damned government, the damned people. Just because we are Jews, we are discriminated against.”
Based on a comparative micro-historical approach and using new sources, as logbooks of Berlin police precincts, trial materials from various German cities as well as video testimonies of survivors, the research demonstrates how Jewish women and men performed countless acts of resistance in Nazi Germany proper between 1933 and 1945. The examples that this nearly ten year long research unearthed demonstrate that Jews reacted not only to well-known national laws, but also to anti-Jewish restrictions and violence at the local level. Jewish women and men of all ages and from all educational and professional backgrounds defied Nazi measures or raised their voices in protest. They developed changing response strategies over time: first against Nazi propaganda and exclusionary economic measures, later against violent local attacks and municipal restrictions as well as the nationwide November pogrom and radical segregationist laws, and finally against forced labor and deportation.
The fact that German Jews protested in public and that so many defied Nazi measures obliterates the common view of passivity on the part of the persecuted. Thus, this micro-historical research changes our macro-historical understanding. It gives agency back to ordinary Jews in extraordinary circumstances. Many German Jews evolve as historical actors who resisted oppression. However, their courageous acts still wait to be incorporated into the general narrative of the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Resisters. How Ordinary Jews fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale UP 2023) Introduction full text

For a wider audience, this book tells five astonishing stories of German Jewish men and women of ... more For a wider audience, this book tells five astonishing stories of German Jewish men and women of different ages who individually resisted Nazi persecution in different ways. After more than 12 years of research, I can show with hundreds of case that individual resistance of Jewish men and women, young and old, ranged from disobeying anti-Jewish laws and contesting anti-Jewish propaganda to protesting persecution in public and physical self-defense against attacks. These accounts dramatically challenge the misconceived, but still widespread idea of the Jews as passive victims in Nazi Germany.

Wolf Gruner/Steven Ross (eds.), New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison (Casden Annual, Vol. 17), West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press 2019, 366 pages.

by Wolf Gruner and Steven Ross

On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leadership unleashed an unprecedented orchestrated wave of viole... more On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leadership unleashed an unprecedented orchestrated wave of violence against Jews in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, supposedly in response to the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a young Polish Jew, but in reality to force the remaining Jews out of the country. During the pogrom, Stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and ordinary Germans murdered more than a hundred Jews (many more committed suicide) and ransacked and destroyed thousands of Jewish institutions, synagogues, shops, and homes. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps.

Volume 17 of the Casden Annual Review includes a series of articles presented at an international conference titled “New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison.” Assessing events 80 years after the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of 1938, contributors to this volume offer new cutting-edge scholarship on the event and its repercussions. Contributors include scholars from the United States, Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom who represent a wide variety of disciplines, including history, political science, and Jewish and media studies. Their essays discuss reactions to the pogrom by victims and witnesses inside Nazi Germany as well as by foreign journalists, diplomats, Jewish organizations, and Jewish print media. Several contributors to the volume analyze postwar narratives of and global comparisons to Kristallnacht, with the aim of situating this anti-Jewish pogrom in its historical context, as well as its place in world history.

Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust. Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner. New York: Berghahn Books 2020, 262 pages

by Wolf Gruner and Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

Introduction, 2020

During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective peti... more During the Holocaust, tens of thousands of European Jews turned to individual and collective petitions in the face of state-sponsored violence. This volume offers the first extensive analysis of petitions authored by Jews in nations ruled by the Nazis and their allies and demonstrates their underappreciated value as a historical sources. New research on the Greater German Reich, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, France, Romania and Hungary illuminates how European Jews resorted to a broad range of entreaties to reassert their agency, reclaim their identity and contest or even resist the mounting discrimination and persecution.

Introduction
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Chapter 1. To Not “Live as a Pariah”: Jewish Petitions as Individual and Collective Protest in the Greater German Reich
Wolf Gruner

Chapter 2. “Did We Not Shed Our Blood for France?” Identity and Resistance in Entreaties for the Jewish Internees of Occupied France, 1940–44
Stacy Renee Veeder

Chapter 3. Honorary Czechs and Germans: Petitions for Aryan Status in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Benjamin Frommer

Chapter 4. Legal Resistance through Petitions during the Holocaust: The Strategies of Romanian Jewish Leader Wilhelm Filderman, 1940–44
Stefan C. Ionescu

Chapter 5. Attempts to Take Action In a Coerced Community? Petitions to the Jewish Council in the Lodz Ghetto during World War II
Svenja Bethke

Chapter 6. Petitioning Matters: Jews and Non-Jews Negotiating Ghettoization in Budapest, 1944
Tim Cole

Chapter 7. Global Jewish Petitioning and the Reconsideration of Spatial Analysis in Holocaust Historiography: The Case of Rescue in the Philippines
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

Chapter 8. Petitioning for “Equal Treatment”: The Struggles of Intermarried Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany
Maximilian Strnad

Conclusion
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Appendix: European-Jewish Petitions during the Holocaust

The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia. Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses, New York: Berghahn 2019, 441 pages

Introduction chapter , 2019

Prior to Hitler’s occupation, nearly 120,000 Jews inhabited the areas that would become the Prote... more Prior to Hitler’s occupation, nearly 120,000 Jews inhabited the areas that would become the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; by 1945, all but a handful had either escaped or been deported and murdered by the Nazis. This pioneering prizewinning study gives a definitive account of the Holocaust as it was carried out in the region, detailing the German and Czech policies, including previously overlooked measures such as small-town ghettoization and forced labor, that shaped Jewish life after 1939. Drawing on extensive new evidence, the book demonstrates how the persecution of the Jews was the result of complex actions by German authorities in Prague and Berlin as well as the Czech government and local authorities. It also illuminates the individual and collective reactions and resistance efforts of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia.

“Whoever is working on the National Socialist persecution of the Jews won’t be able to ignore Wolf Gruner’s work.” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“This study is stimulating, closes a gap in scholarship and opens up a wide range of new sources.” • Sehepunkte

“It should be considered as the standard work on this topic.” • Historische Zeitschrift

WINNER OF THE 2017 SYBIL HALPERN MILTON MEMORIAL BOOK PRIZE FROM THE GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION, 2017 YAD VASHEM INTERNATIONAL BOOK PRIZE FOR HOLOCAUST RESEARCH - FINALIST

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Czechoslovak Republic and its Minorities
 Chapter 2. Annexation: Violence, Flight and Emigration Ban
Chapter 3. German Expulsion and Czech Persecution 
Chapter 4. The War and Greater German Deportation Plans 
Chapter 5. Reorientation, Ghettoization and Protest 
Chapter 6. Local versus Central Persecutory Initiatives
Chapter 7. Isolation, Forced Labour and Opposition 
Chapter 8. Repression, Deportation and Resistance 
Chapter 9. Transports, Theft, Forced Labour and Flight
Chapter 10. Those Left Behind and the End of the War

Conclusion

Appendix: Tables

Bibliography
Index

Judenverfolgung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. Lokale Initiativen, zentrale Entscheidungen, jüdische Antworten, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2016, 430 pages

Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association 2017 for the best book... more Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize of the German Studies Association 2017 for the best book in Holocaust Studies in 2015-2016; Yad Vashem International Book Prize in Holocaust research 2017 for the best book in 2015-2016, Finalist; Prize for one of the most outstanding German studies in humanities and social sciences in 2017 by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, the VG WORT and the German Foreign Office.

Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Local Initiatives, Central Decisions, Jewish Responses 1938-1945

This book in German (soon to be published in English and Czech) is the first authoritative account on the persecution of the Jews in the Czech part of former Czechoslovakia after the 2005 book by Lidia Rothkirchen. Yet, my book analyses for the first time systematically the mutual dynamic between German and Czech, national, regional and local perpetrator policies, demonstrating Czech radicalizing initiatives and thus ending the legend of sole German anti-Jewish policies and pointing to the importance of local and regional factors and institutions. The book is also able to show how these diverse policies impacted the Jewish communities and people, based on a broad range of new sources that include the entire set of weekly reports of the Prague Jewish community to Eichmann from July 1939- Summer 1942 plus video testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation. These sources led to the discovery of many new facts, for example about an early wave of gettoization in dozens of Czech towns starting in spring of 1940 that mirrors the development in Poland long before the creation of the Terezin ghetto, but also about the creation of Jews houses in Prague, and the forgotten origin of the yellow star measure in Prague in 1941 etc. Always comparing the Protectorate development with policies in Vienna, Germany and Poland, the book speaks to the overlooked importance of the Protectorate for the understanding of the development of the Holocaust in Europe. One more important element of this new account are several subchapters exploring a wide range of active individual Jewish resistance acts that change our perspective of how Jews and Jewish communities responded to the persecution.

Über die zentrale Rolle des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren bei der Radikalisierung der Judenverfolgung in Europa.

Von den über 118.000 im März 1939 in Böhmen und Mähren lebenden Juden konnten bis Oktober 1941 nur etwa 25.000 flüchten. Seit der Errichtung des Protektorats radikalisierten tschechische und deutsche Behörden die antijüdische Politik. Sie beraubten die Juden ihres Eigentums, ghettoisierten sie, zogen sie zur Zwangsarbeit heran und deportierten sie schließlich nach Theresienstadt, bevor viele von dort in die Vernichtungslager verschleppt wurden. Rund 80.000 tschechische Juden fielen dem Holocaust zum Opfer.
Die richtungsweisende Studie zeigt, dass die Politik nicht allein von Berlin aus gesteuert, sondern oft von der tschechischen Regierung oder lokalen Behörden vorangetrieben wurde. Prager Initiativen beförderten, wie in der Frage der Kennzeichnung der Juden 1941, sogar zentrale Entscheidungen im Deutschen Reich oder anderen besetzten Gebieten. Das Protektorat nimmt damit eine bisher verkannte wichtige Zwischenstellung in der Radikalisierung der antijüdischen Politik ein.
Anhand der bislang unbekannten Wochenberichte der Jüdischen Gemeinde Prag an Adolf Eichmann kann der Autor die Auswirkungen auf das Leben der jüdischen Bevölkerung erstmals detailliert analysieren.

The Persecution of the Jews in Berlin 1933-1945. A Chronology of Measures by the Authorities in the German Capital, Translation (updated) of the 2nd substantially revised and expanded edition, Berlin: Stiftung Topographie des Terrors 2014, 200 pages (full text)

A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and ot... more A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and other perpetrator agencies against the Berlin Jews. The day by day chronicle, based on many hitherto unknown sources, provides the reader with a detailed and graphic picture of how the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of public life unfolded over time and who was responsible for it. The introduction discusses the overlooked importance of local institutions for the radicalization of the persecution in the capital of the Third Reich, yet also touches upon the reactions and resistance of the Jews.

Parias de la Patria. El mito de la liberación de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia (1825-1890) (Parias de la Patria. The myth of the liberation of the indigenous people in the Bolivian Republic), La Paz, Bolivia: Plural Editores 2015, 345 pages. (Full text)

En el presente estudio se demuestro por primera vez de manera sistemática e integral la exclusión... more En el presente estudio se demuestro por primera vez de manera sistemática e integral la exclusión estatal por motivos raciales que conocieron aymaras y quechuas desde la independencia del dominio colonial español, una exclusión en la que enraízan tanto conflictos históricos como actuales de la sociedad boliviana, de modo similar al de otros países latinoamericanos poscoloniales. Frente a los supuestos de la investigación realizada hasta ahora, no obstante, los resultados demuestran que la discriminación estatal de la mayoría indígena en el siglo XIX no debe ser entendida como una hipoteca colonial de la República, sino como uno de sus elementos constitutivos a largo plazo, que sirvió a la cohesión y la consolidación del poder de la minoría criolla.

The Greater German Reich and the Jews. Nazi Persecution Policies in the Annexed Territories 1935-1945, coedited with Joerg Osterloh, Berghahn Books New York 2015

Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The... more Between 1935 and 1940, the Nazis incorporated large portions of Europe into the German Reich. The contributors to this volume analyze the evolving anti-Jewish policies in the annexed territories and their impact on the Jewish population, as well as the attitudes and actions of non-Jews, Germans, and indigenous populations. They demonstrate that diverse anti-Jewish policies developed in the different territories, which in turn affected practices in other regions and even influenced Berlin’s decisions. Having these systematic studies together in one volume enables a comparison - based on the most recent research - between anti-Jewish policies in the areas annexed by the Nazi state. The results of this prizewinning book call into question the common assumption that one central plan for persecution extended across Nazi-occupied Europe, shifting the focus onto differing regional German initiatives and illuminating the cooperation of indigenous institutions.

Gedenkort. Rosenstraße 2-4: Internierung und Protest im NS-Staat, hrsg. von der Topographie des Terrors,, Hentrich&Hentrich Verlag Berlin 2013

co-ed. with Jörg Osterloh: Das „Großdeutsche Reich“ und die Juden. Nationalsozialistische Verfolgungspolitik in den „angegliederten“ Gebieten (The Greater German Reich and the Jews), Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag 2010, 440 pages

Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933-1945: eine Chronologie der Behördenmassnahmen in der Reichshauptstadt

Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis. Economic Needs and Racial Aims (1938-1944), Cambridge University Press: New York 2006, 322 pages Revised Paperback edition 2008

Forced labor was a key feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and shaped the daily life of almost eve... more Forced labor was a key feature of Nazi anti-Jewish policy and shaped the daily life of almost every Jewish family in occupied Europe. For the first time, this book systematically describes the implementation of forced labor for Jews in Germany, Austria, the Protectorate, and the various occupied Polish territories. As early as the end of 1938, compulsory labor for Jews had been introduced in Germany and annexed Austria by the labor administration. Similar programs subsequently were established by civil administrations in the German-occupied Czech and Polish territories. At its maximum extent, more than one million Jewish men and women toiled for private companies and public builders, many of them in hundreds of now often-forgotten special labor camps. This study refutes the widespread thesis that compulsory work was organized only by the SS, and that exploitation was only an intermediate tactic on the way to mass murder or, rather, that it was only a facet in the destruction of the Jews.

(ed.): Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, part I, Vol 1: Das Deutsche Reich 1933 bis 1937 (Collection of primary Holocaust documents on Germany 1933-1937), Oldenbourg Verlag: Munich 2008, 811 pages

Widerstand in der Rosenstraße. Die Fabrik-Aktion und die Verfolgung der „Mischehen“ 1943

Öffentliche Wohlfahrt und Judenverfolgung: Wechselwirkungen lokaler und zentraler Politik im NS-Staat (1933-1942)

Zwangsarbeit und Verfolgung: Österreichische Juden im NS-Staat 1938-45

Der geschlossene Arbeitseinsatz deutscher Juden: Zur Zwangsarbeit als Element der Verfolgung 1938-1943

Judenverfolgung in Berlin 1933-1945

My unorthodox path. Toward integrative, interdisciplinary, and comparative Holocaust studies

Advancing Holocaust Studies, ed. and introd. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, New York: Routledge 2021, 2020

What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies—what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust... more What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies—what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust for—in such dire straits? Vast resources support study and memorialization of the Holocaust. What assumptions govern that investment? What are its major successes and failures, challenges and prospects? Across thirteen chapters, Advancing Holocaust Studies shows how leading scholars grapple with those tough questions.

Defiance and Protest. A Comparative Micro-Historical Re-evaluation of Individual Jewish Responses towards Nazi Persecution, in: Claire Zalc/Tal Bruttmann (eds.), Microhistories of the Holocaust, New York: Berghahn Books 2017, pp. 209-226.

Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is largely understood as rare armed group activities in th... more Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is largely understood as rare armed group activities in the Nazi occupied East, for example ghetto uprisings or partisan activities. By contrast, this research focuses on forgotten individual acts of resistance, like the case of Hertha Reis, who protested in plain daylight against the persecution in 1941, a few months before the mass deportation started in the capital of the Third Reich. She exclaimed in front of the Berlin courthouse “We lost everything. Because of the damned government, we finally lost our home, too. This thug Hitler, the damned government, the damned people. Just because we are Jews, we are discriminated against.”
Based on a comparative micro-historical approach and using new sources, as logbooks of Berlin police precincts, trial materials from various German cities as well as video testimonies of survivors, the research demonstrates how Jewish women and men performed countless acts of resistance in Nazi Germany proper between 1933 and 1945. The examples that this nearly ten year long research unearthed demonstrate that Jews reacted not only to well-known national laws, but also to anti-Jewish restrictions and violence at the local level. Jewish women and men of all ages and from all educational and professional backgrounds defied Nazi measures or raised their voices in protest. They developed changing response strategies over time: first against Nazi propaganda and exclusionary economic measures, later against violent local attacks and municipal restrictions as well as the nationwide November pogrom and radical segregationist laws, and finally against forced labor and deportation.
The fact that German Jews protested in public and that so many defied Nazi measures obliterates the common view of passivity on the part of the persecuted. Thus, this micro-historical research changes our macro-historical understanding. It gives agency back to ordinary Jews in extraordinary circumstances. Many German Jews evolve as historical actors who resisted oppression. However, their courageous acts still wait to be incorporated into the general narrative of the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Indifference? Participation and Protest as Individual Responses to the Persecution of the Jews as Revealed in Berlin Police Logs and Trial Records, 1933-45

Indifference? Participation and Protest as Individual Responses to the Persecution of the Jews Alan Steinweis/Susanna Schrafstetter (eds.), The Germans and the Holocaust. Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews, New York: Berghahn, 2016

The article deals with the participation and defiance of non-Jewish Germans, in this case Berline... more

“Los parias de la patria”. La discriminación estatal de los indígenas en la República de Bolivia (1825-1952/53), in: Identidad, ciudadanía y participación popular desde la colonia al siglo XX, ed. de Josefa Salmon y Guillermo Delgado, Plural Editores, La Paz 2003, pp. 181-190.

„Armenier-Greuel.“ Was wussten jüdische und nichtjüdische Deutsche im NS-Staat über den Völkermord von 1915/16?, in: Holocaust und Völkermorde. Die Reichweite des Vergleichs, ed. by Sybille Steinbacher, Fritz-Bauer-Institut, Frankfurt/Main-New York 2012, pp. 31-54.

Local Initiatives, Central Coordination: German Municipal Administration and the Holocaust, in: Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel (eds.): Networks of Nazi Persecution. Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust, Berghahn Books, New York-Oxford 2005, pp. 269-294.

Die Berliner und die NS-Judenverfolgung. Eine mikrohistorische Studie individueller Handlungen und sozialer Beziehungen, in: Rüdiger Hachtmann u.a. (eds), Berlin im Nationalsozialismus. Politik und Gesellschaft 1933-1945 (BGNS, Vol. 27), Göttingen 2011, pp. 57-87.

„Peregrinations into the Void?“ German Jews and their Knowledge about the Armenian Genocide during the Third Reich, in: Central European History, 45 (2012), No. 1, pp. 1–26.

Von der Kollektivausweisung zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland. Neue Perspektiven und Dokumente (1938-1945), in: Birthe Kundrus/Beate Mayer (eds), Die Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland. Pläne, Praxis, Reaktionen 1938-1945 (BGNS, Vol. 20), Göttingen 2004, pp. 21-62.

Die Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland: Plane …, Jan 1, 2004

Die NS-Judenverfolgung und die Kommunen. Zur wechselseitigen Dynamisierung von zentraler und lokaler Politik 1933-1941

VIERTELJAHRESHEFT FUR …, Jan 1, 2000

Die Grundstücke der Reichsfeinde". Zur Arisierung" von Immobilien durch Städte und Gemeinden 1938-1945

… . Volksgemeinschaft, Raub und Gedächtnis, hrsg. im …, Jan 1, 2000

The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin: Facts and Fictions about 27 February 1943 — Sixty Years Later

Central European History, 2003

Die Reichshauptstadt und die Verfolgung der Berliner Juden 1933-1945

Jüdische Geschichte in Berlin

Juden bauen die" Strassen des Fuehrers" Zwangsarbeit und Zwangsarbeitslager fuer nichtdeutsche Juden im Altreich 1940 bis 1943/44

… FUR GESCHICHTSWISSENSCHAFT-BERLIN- …, Jan 1, 1996

Die öffentliche Fürsorge und die deutschen Juden 1933-1942. Zur antijüdischen Politik der Städte, des Deutschen Gemeindetages und des …

ZfG, Jan 1, 1997

Terra incognita?-Die Lager für den jüdischen Arbeitseinsatz"(1938-1943) und die deutsche Bevölkerung

Ursula Büttner (Hg.): Die Deutschen und die …, Jan 1, 1992

A Historikerstreit? A Reply to Nathan Stoltzfus's Response

Central European History, 2005

The German Council of Municipalities (Deutscher Gemeindetag) and the Coordination of anti-Jewish local Politics in the Nazi State

Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1999

Review on Boeckl-Klamper, Elisabeth, Thomas Mang, and Wolfgang Neugebauer. The Vienna Gestapo, 1938–1945: Crimes, Perpetrators, Victims. Translated by John Nicholson and Nick Somers. New York: Berghahn, 2022

Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 54 , May 2023 , pp. 261 - 262, 2023

The coauthors of this work call the Gestapo the "most important instrument of terror on Austrian ... more The coauthors of this work call the Gestapo the "most important instrument of terror on Austrian soil"; it was "responsible for combating all forms of resistance, organized and non-organized, and played a leading part in the persecution of the Jewish population" (1). Established after the annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938, with 900 employees the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna was the largest regional office after the Berlin headquarters in Greater Germany. Despite the importance of this institution, it has hitherto been the subject of only one (voluminous) unpublished dissertation and a few biographies. As in almost all of Germany, the Vienna Gestapo systematically destroyed their files in 1945; only their daily reports survived. This survey seeks to provide as comprehensive an account as possible, focusing on the structure, personnel, and activities of the Vienna Gestapo (3). The authors outline the history of the Gestapo since 1933, including the introduction of "protective custody." The Gestapo increasingly utilized this main tool of repression in the newly established concentration camps to quell potential or actual opposition. Despite the authors' assertion that the Gestapo operated free of any control (16), as part of the police they fell under the authority of the Reich Ministry of Interior, which limited its autonomy. Only in 1943 did the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, take over the ministry, which still did not pass the state monopoly of force to the SS. Instead of on facts from Vienna, the authors base their claim that the Gestapo had more authority than the judiciary solely on Ernst Fraenkel's 1941 work The Dual State (154). The volume discusses the establishment and administrative structure of the regional headquarters in Vienna at the Hotel Metropole (today Regina) headed by Franz Josef Huber after the March 1938 annexation. The rapid takeover of the police, facilitated by many Austrian criminal police officers who were illegal Nazi party members, enabled the massive Gestapo assault. The authors emphasize the important and often overlooked fact that the Gestapo employed many women-in Vienna between 17 and 30 percent of the staff-mostly as desk workers and secretaries. The large Vienna office saw a low turnover due to its geopolitical importance in an annexed territory with several important borders. During the first weeks, Vienna Gestapo officers arrested tens of thousands of people; many of them were tortured and sent to concentration camps. Before the Germans invaded Austria, the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst of the SS (SD) had already prepared arrest lists of "dangerous Jewish lawyers" and Jewish leaders. The Jewish community was shut down on 18 March 1938 and functionaries were arrested, only to be reopened on 2 May under the complete control of the Gestapo and SD. However, Austrian Nazi Party and Sturmabteilung (SA) members undertook many of the early arrests of individual Jews, which included beatings, humiliation, and looting. The Gestapo section II B 4, responsible for Jews, organized the first major actions under the twenty-eight-year-old Rudolf Lange and deported 1,202 so-called undesirable Jews to the Dachau concentration camp on 31 May and 3 June 1938. The next big action took place in November, when Heinrich Müller ordered all Gestapo offices to arrest as many Jews as possible during the pogrom. In Vienna, they detained 6,547 Jews, of which 3,989 ended up in Dachau. Although the Gestapo was supposed to prevent looting, it was widespread. For seized cash and precious items, the Vienna Gestapo set up a special subunit, which sent later one million Reichsmarks worth of jewelry to Berlin, where it was auctioned off for cheap. Book Reviews 261

Review on Evgeny Finkel, Ordinary Jews. Choice and Survival during the Holocaust, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ 2017

Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 32, Issue 3, Winter 2018, Pages 472–474, 2018

Review on: Hans-Christian Jasch, Staatssekretar Wilhelm Stuckart und die Judenpolitik. Der Mythos von der sauberen Verwaltung, Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012.

The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 86, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 727-729

Review on Manfred Gailus, Mir aber zerriss es das Herz: Der stille Widerstand der Elisabeth Schmitz (It broke my heart, though. The silent resistance of Elisabeth Schmitz), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010.

Journal of Genocide Research

Review for The English Historical Review: The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. ed. by Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, (Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 2010), xiii+675 pages.

Review: A Narrow Bridge to Life: Jewish Forced Labor and Survival in the Gross-Rosen Camp System, 1940–1945. By Bella Gutterman. Translated by IBRT. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2008. Pp. viii+290, including maps, photographs, and index. Cloth $39.95. ISBN 1845452062

Central European History, 2010

Call for Papers International Conference Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples - The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region

by Wolf Gruner and Lorena Sekwan Fontaine

CfP, 2020

The organizers of the international conference “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenou... more The organizers of the international conference “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples - The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region” invite scholars and knowledge holders to submit proposals for papers, panels, posters, and alternative forms of presentation related to the theme of the conference.

The conference, which is co-sponsored by the Indigenous Knowledge Institute of the University of Melbourne (Australia), will be hosted by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and take place at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which sits on the traditional land of the Tongva/Gabrieliño People.

The conference will commence on October 12, 2020, Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The conference will provide a forum for leading and emerging scholars and knowledge holders from around the world to present groundbreaking research on the topics of genocide against Indigenous peoples (especially in North America, Latin America, and Australia/Pacific Region), the long-lasting impacts of mass violence on those communities, and their resistance, agency, and initiatives to effect change. The objective of the conference is to foster an international, interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on these subjects, across a variety of historical, cultural, and geographic contexts. By convening international experts, preferably from Indigenous peoples, the conference will stimulate discovery and debate about the common dynamics, patterns, and features of colonial/postcolonial violence and its aftermath, as well as the specificities and unique factors that shaped the manifestations and effects of and reactions to that violence in each community.

CfP: Edited Book on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies: Preserving, Researching, and Re-Presenting Survivor’s Voices

by Wolf Gruner and Miriam Offer

This edited volume sets out to reevaluate the study and role of Holocaust testimonies in the twen... more This edited volume sets out to reevaluate the study and role of Holocaust testimonies in the twenty-first century. The prospect of a world without Holocaust survivors poses profound challenges, precisely because their testimony has become so central to Holocaust memory, education, and research since the 1980s. Scholarly work on survivor testimony is done today in many academic disciplines. The rich and varied corpus of testimonies requires the collaborative efforts of researchers across disciplines to enable us to hear the voices of survivors articulated through their testimonies. This volume takes stock of the extensive work that has been accomplished, discusses the challenges, and explores new ways of preserving, analyzing, and re-presenting Holocaust survivor testimonies at this critical time.

CfP: Edited Book on: Petitions Resisting Genocide. Negotiating Self-Determination and Survival in Societies under Oppression

Holocaust and genocide scholarship has paid strikingly little attention to European-Jewish petiti... more Holocaust and genocide scholarship has paid strikingly little attention to European-Jewish petitions of the 1930s and 1940s in particular or entreaties during modern genocides in general. This neglect is grounded in a limited view in some of the most influential works in the field. In his groundbreaking 1961 study The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg, for example, focused on Jewish petitions to make his case for the alleged absence of resistance by Jewish communities. More recently-published studies have largely continued this trend or, when dealing with responses of genocide victims, concentrated on ego-documents such as diaries and letters, while ignoring petitions as largely worthless reactions of persecuted groups in oppressed societies. This edited volume sets out to reevaluate and challenge these claims. It will conceptualize petitions as deliberate acts of individual or collective resistance. Our volume will, thus, examine to what extent and how appeals, petitions and entreaties sent by the persecuted to governments, state and municipal administrations, as well as party agencies of genocidal or dictatorial regimes, have been crucial in the struggle of these individuals and groups for self-determination, self-preservation, and survival. From indigenous groups in post-colonial Latin America to Jewish populations during the Holocaust, individuals and groups used the means of writing letters or memoranda to reclaim agency, redefine their place in society and manipulate their oppressors. To help analyzing the act of petitioning as resistance, this volume will work with a broad understanding of resistance as well as a deliberately far-reaching concept of petitions to capture the extensive range of entreaties by populations victimized or about to be victimized in genocidal or oppressive societies. In contrast to much of the evidence of modern genocides and mass violence, petitions comprise active practices of victims and perpetrators and, thus, are inherently multi-layered. The examination of these micro-processes and intricate interactions shall produce new insights and more complex understanding of difficult negotiations of persecuted populations under murderous regimes, these men and women's survival strategies, and the racial and political practices of the Nazi and other genocidal states. In light of these aims, we are hoping for contributions by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including history, law, political science, international relations, sociology, anthropology, communication, as well as genocide, human rights and regional studies. The essays should address the following questions without being limited by them:

Call for Papers: International Workshop: Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks During and After the Holocaust Co-Organized by the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington

by Anne-Christin Klotz, Robin Buller, and Wolf Gruner

Call for Papers, 2021

Call for Papers: International Workshop Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks During and Af... more Call for Papers: International Workshop
Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks During and After the Holocaust, Los Angeles, April 4-5, 2022 at University of Southern California
Co-organized by the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI | PRO) and the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research
Conveners: Robin M Buller (GHI | PRO, UC Berkeley)
Wolf Gruner (USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research)
Anne-Christin Klotz (GHI | PRO, UC Berkeley)

UN CONFLICTO? GENOCIDIO Y RESISTENCIA EN GUATEMALA

by USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and Wolf Gruner

Septiembre 11-14, 2016 Diciembre del 2016 marcará el 20º aniversario de la firma de los acuerdos... more Septiembre 11-14, 2016

Diciembre del 2016 marcará el 20º aniversario de la firma de los acuerdos de paz culminando así treinta y seis años de guerra civil en Guatemala. El Centro para la investigación avanzada de genocidio de la Fundación de USC Shoah convocará a una conferencia académica internacional con investigadores en diversas disciplinas, en los campos de estudios latinoamericanos y estudios del genocidio para avanzar la discusión de "genocidio y resistencia en Guatemala". La Conferencia será organizada por Wolf Gruner, director y fundador del centro y Victoria Sanford, directora y fundadora del Centro para los Derechos Humanos y Estudios para la Paz (CfHRPS) del Lehman College, City Universidad de Nueva York.

The Future of Holocaust Testimonies V: An International Conference and Workshop, March 2019

by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner

Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture, but... more Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture, but as fewer and fewer survivors remain among us, we need to consider how and in what forms Holocaust scholarship and the memory of the Holocaust will continue. One critical focus will certainly be the legacy that survivors leave behind in the forms of written, audio, and video testimonies, as well as in the transmission of their testimony to their children and grandchildren, who have their own stories to tell, as well as to researchers. In addition, those who are not survivors or their descendants seem destined to play an increased role in the transmission of the history and memory of the Holocaust. We welcome proposals for papers on any aspect of the future of Holocaust testimonies.