Episodes
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France was one of the victors of World War I and a safe haven for many political and Jewish refugees in the 1930s. The Germans attacked and defeated the French in 1940. Anti-Semitism became a core element not only of German policy and propaganda, but also of the collaborationist government under Marshal Pétain. We talk with historian Renée Poznanski about how the anti-Semitic idea of a "Jewish question" influenced how Jews were persecuted in France and how the country remembered the occupation after the war.
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"The Holocaust was not a metaphor…as historians we must be aware of metaphors, and we must explain exactly the horrific things that happened during the Holocaust." (Havi Dreifuss) - 81 years ago, on April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began. In our second episode on Poland, we spoke with historian Havi Dreifuss about the Jewish experience of the Holocaust in Poland and her last book "Ghetto Warsaw. The End". In her research, she uses diaries, letters, and other contemporary documents – letting Jews themselves describe the horrific reality of the ghetto. We talked about Jewish-Polish relations, the origins of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, and how to write about the Holocaust when most of the survivors are no longer with us.
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Episodes manquant?
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Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe before the war. Most of the more than 3 million Jews living in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust. In our first episode on Poland, we talk with historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe about the role played by Polish mayors in the German-occupied General Government during the Holocaust. As part of the occupation, the Germans dismantled the Polish central state. On the local level, however, Polish officials were often allowed to remain in office. It was primarily the mayors who represented the population’s interests to the occupying power.
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We speak with the archivist and historian Dorien Styven – our colleague from the Belgian Holocaust Memorial "Kazerne Dossin" – about the Committee for the Defense of the Jews (CDJ). This organization's main goal was to save as many Jews as possible from being murdered by the Nazis. Founded by young communists, the Committee brought together very different Jewish groups. It succeeded in creating a vast network that helped about 3,000 children hide in private families and child care institutions. Partisans close to the Committee also carried out the only known attack on a deportation train to have taken place during the Holocaust.
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Rabbi Leo Baeck was one of the leading scholars of liberal Judaism in his time. When the Nazis came to power, he became the chairman of the newly formed Representative Council of German Jews. He led the Jewish community until his own deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Judith and Jakob speak with Michael A. Meyer, who has written a new biography on Baeck’s fascinating life. Michael was a professor at the Hebrew Union College and published widely on Jewish history and liberal Judaism. He was the editor of the four-volume “German-Jewish History in Modern Times” and edited the last volume of Baeck’s collected works.
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The men at the Wannsee Conference planned to extend mass murder to all of Europe. In the protocol of the conference, Jewish populations were reduced to columns of numbers and estimates. We want to challenge this perspective by looking more closely at the specific situations in the different countries and communities that were targeted by the Nazi criminals.
