The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives
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THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum promotes the growth of the field of Holocaust studies, including the dissemination of scholarly output in the field. It also strives to facilitate the training of future generations of scholars specializing in the Holocaust. Under the guidance of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the Center provides a fertile atmosphere for scholarly discourse and debate through research and publication projects, conferences, fellowship and visiting scholar opportunities, and a network of cooperative programs with universities and other institutions in the United States and abroad. In furtherance of this program the Center has established a series of working and occasional papers prepared by scholars in history, political science, philosophy, religion, sociology, literature, psychology, and other disciplines. Selected from Center-sponsored lectures and conferences, THE HOLOCAUST or the result of other activities related to the Center’s mission, these publications are designed to make this research available in a timely IN UKRAINE fashion to other researchers and to the general public. New Sources and Perspectives Conference Presentations 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW Washington, DC 20024-2126 ushmm.org The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives Conference Presentations CENTER FOR ADVANCED HOLOCAUST STUDIES UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM 2013 The assertions, opinions, and conclusions in this occasional paper are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The articles in this collection are not transcripts of the papers as presented, but rather extended or revised versions that incorporate additional information and citations. All of the contributions were copyedited. Although the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum makes every reasonable effort to provide accurate information, the Museum cannot guarantee the reliability, currency, or completeness of the material in the individual papers. First printing, April 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Delphine Bechtel; Copyright © 2013 by Crispin Brooks, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2013 by Martin Dean, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Desbois; Copyright © 2013 by Markus Eikel; Copyright © 2013 by Norbert Kunz; Copyright © 2013 by Wendy Lower; Copyright © 2013 by Ralf Meindl, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Copyright © 2013 by Anatoly Podolsky; Copyright © 2013 by Viktoria Sukovata, assigned to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum This conference highlighted the historical research on the Holocaust in Ukraine, including discussions of new sources of documentation. Topics included perpetration, collaboration, and local reaction; documentation, physical evidence, and testimony; the history, responses, and resistance of Jews and other victim groups; and aspects of historical memory and representation. The conference was jointly organized by the Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris; the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC; Yahad-In Unum: Catholics and Jews Together, Paris; and the Center for Central European History of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. Contents Opening Remarks ........................................................................................................... vii Paul A. Shapiro The 1941 Pogroms as Represented in Western Ukrainian Historiography and Memorial Culture ......................................................................................................1 Delphine Bechtel Visual History Archive Interviews on the Holocaust in Ukraine....................................17 Crispin Brooks German Ghettoization in Occupied Ukraine: Regional Patterns and Sources ..............63 Martin Dean The Witnesses of Ukraine or Evidence from the Ground: The Research of Yahad—In Unum.............................................................................................................91 Father Patrick Desbois Division of Labor and Cooperation: The Local Administration under German Occupation in Central and Eastern Ukraine, 1941–1944 ..............................101 Markus Eikel “The Jews are Completely Destroyed”: The Fate of Jewish Minorities in the Crimea in World War II ......................................................................................121 Norbert Kunz Anti-Jewish Violence in Western Ukraine, Summer 1941: Varied Histories and Explanations ..........................................................................................................143 Wendy Lower The Reichskommissar in the Decision-Making Process of the Ukrainian Holocaust.....................................................................................................175 Ralf Meindl Collaboration in Ukraine during the Holocaust: Aspects of Historiography and Research.................................................................................................................187 Anatoly Podolsky Teaching Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Modern Ukraine: Problems and Perspectives ...........................................................................................................199 Viktoria Sukovata Appendix: Biographies of Contributors ........................................................................211 Opening Remarks Dear colleagues, survivors of the Holocaust, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the opening of this very special conference on the Holocaust in Ukraine. The conference is the result of a unique institutional partnership between the Mémorial de la Shoah, Yahad—in Unum and the Catholic Church, the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Exceptional sponsors—the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Deanie and Jay Stein, the Morris Family Foundation—added strong financial support to the resources of the organizing partners. This broad cooperative effort is built on a number of intellectual pillars: 1) The belief that it is critical in both memorial and intellectual terms to study the Shoah, in particular aspects of the Shoah that have not been adequately explored up to now, and to present the results of new research to scholars and the general public; 2) The belief that the Shoah is much more than frightening history; it is history that continues to affect the way in which we live today; what happened 65 years ago is directly relevant to our lives today in a world rife with genocide and stained by continuing, virulent antisemitism; we continue to experience the direct consequences of the Shoah and to confront problems for which understanding the Shoah may help provide solutions; in short, we continue to live Holocaust history today; 3) The belief that no event illustrates so clearly the danger—to Jews, Christians, and others—of unchecked antisemitism and the racial, ethnic, and religious hatred that its acceptance can unleash; 4) The belief that there is among human beings a shared set of values regarding relationships that are cornerstones of what we call civilization—values that have emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition (the Abrahamic tradition, to be even more appropriately inclusive) and that have been transformed over centuries into the fundamental values of our civilization, whether expressed in religious or secular terms and whether enunciated through popular custom or from the heights of our most distinguished intellectual centers and institutions; 5) And the belief that studying the Holocaust can help us appreciate in a uniquely powerful way the importance of defending those common values—and the immense cost of failing to do so. Our goal over the next two days is to memorialize, to understand, and to stimulate. To come face to face with the facts of mass murder, not as theory or as macro- history, but at ground level, and to remember the victims. To explore the potentialities of all human beings, illustrated so graphically in the Ukraine during the Holocaust—the potentiality to be perpetrators; to be victimized; to look away and consider what happens in your presence to be only someone else’s business; all too rarely, to act selflessly or nobly; or, since we continue to live this history, to give and take testimony, even if decades later, so that truth might prevail. And to stimulate further scholarly research, further teaching about the Shoah in university settings, and greater emphasis on the steps necessary to ensure that we are able to educate the next generation—the first that will mature in the absence of Holocaust survivors and other eyewitnesses—about the Shoah. Thank you very much. Paul A. Shapiro Director Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies United States Holocaust Memorial Museum THE 1941 POGROMS AS REPRESENTED IN WESTERN UKRAINIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND MEMORIAL CULTURE Delphine Bechtel Following the publication of Jan T. Gross’s book Neighbors,1 a vast movement to uncover the forgotten history of the first days of Nazi occupation in northeastern Poland was launched by dozens of historians and researchers from the Polish Academy of Science (PAN), the Institute for National Memory (IPN), and Polish universities at large. The resulting analyses and interpretations,2 as well as the archival sources on which they were based,