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Volume 13, Number 2 Page The Bulletin www.uvm.edu/~uvmchs Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2009 The Fifth Miller Symposium: “The Law in Nazi Germany” by Michelle Magin On 19 April 2009, the University of Vermont hosted responses grew increasingly radical. Previously dis- the Fifth Miller Symposium, focusing on “The Law in missed explanations, which blamed the growing inde- Nazi Germany.” The speakers included Konrad H. pendence of women, the “world Jewish conspiracy,” Jarausch of the University of North Carolina at Chapel and the influx of foreigners, became more widely ac- Hill, Douglas G. Morris of the Federal Defenders of cepted. With the Weimar government offering no viable New York, Harry Reicher of the University of Pennsyl- remedies to this situation, many academics and profes- vania Law School, Raphael Gross of the Jüdisches Mu- sionals sought more radical alternatives. seum in Frankfurt and the Leo Baeck Institute of Lon- The popularity of the Nazis grew among students, don, and Kenneth F. Ledford of Case Western Reserve after the 1933 electoral breakthrough. Although Nazi University. Robert Rachlin of Downs, Rachlin, Martin purges had excluded Social Democrats, political dissent- and the Vermont Law School moderated the proceed- ers and Jews from numerous professions, these actions ings. The main themes addressed in their papers were only impacted a narrow base of individuals. Many stu- the active and passive acceptance of anti-Semitism by dents and professionals embraced Nazi rhetoric, and lawyers in the Third Reich; the persecution of Jewish this acceptance facilitated a dramatic push to the right. lawyers by the Nazis; post-war trials of Nazi judges, Gradually, mainstream society began to view Nazism as prosecutors, and civil servants; the role of morality in a quasi-respectable ideology. Nazi groups quickly be- Nazi ideology and law; and the transformation of the gan to criticize the over-representation of Jews in medi- German judiciary before, during, and after Nazism. cine and law. Jarausch argued that the drive to remove Professor Jarausch opened the symposium with a Jews from the professions stemmed from both a desire paper on “The Conundrum of Complicity: German Pro- to racially nationalize Germany and an eagerness to fessionals and the Final Solution.” Throughout his lec- open jobs in an overcrowded market. Subsequent laws ture Jarausch incorporated the personal experiences of expelled Jewish colleagues and restricted the entry of his family; however, he began his presentation with a Jewish students into the professions. The civil service more general historical narrative of academic and pro- endured similar purges of leftists, political opponents fessional involvement in Nazi Germany. While he dis- and “non-Aryans.” By 1938, the “cleansing” of the gov- missed the average book burner as an overzealous fas- (Continued on page 3) cist follower, he puzzled over the willingness of profes- sionals to contribute enthusiastically, or at least will- ingly, to the “Final Solution.” In order to explain this involvement, Jarausch sketched the typical histories and Dear Friends, experiences of lawyers and other German professionals In order to communicate more effec- both before and during the Third Reich. There was so- tively with our community, we are building cial distance between professionals and the lower a database of e-mail addresses. If you classes. Professionals possessed theoretical knowledge, would like to receive e-mails regarding up- practical competence, and job security, but the First coming events and other news from the World War and the Great Depression shattered this sta- UVM Center for Holocaust Studies we ask bility. The Weimar period saw an overabundance of that you send us an e-mail to the following students, alongside declining industrial revenues, gov- address: [email protected]. ernment pay cuts, and shrinking job markets. Given the uncertainty of their future, the younger generation We thank you for your assistance! viewed these new circumstances as a betrayal of their previous expectations. As a result, their attitudes and Page 2 The Bulletin News from the Faculty Professor Jonathan Huener had two pieces pub- Third Reich and the Middle East: Jews and Arabs in lished in the last year: an article entitled “Auschwitz Nazi Race Policy,” is reviewed on Page 4. 1945-1947: the Politics of Memory and Mourning” ap- Professor Nicosia published a book, Zionism and peared in the most recent issue of Polin: Studies in Polish Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (New York: Cambridge Jewry (vol. XX/2008), and a chapter entitled “Mémoire University Press, 2008). He also contributed a chapter, catholique et commémoration à Auschwitz” appeared “German Zionism in Nazi Berlin,” to the book from the in the anthology Juif et Polonais 1939-2008, ed. Jean- Fourth Miller Symposium, Jewish Life in Nazi Germany: Charles Szurek and Annette Wieviorka (Paris, Albin Dilemmas and Responses (Berghahn Books, forthcoming Michel, 2009). He also attended the annual meeting of 2010), which he co-edited with David Scrase. the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, Professor Nicosia is conducting research on another where he presented a paper on “Polish Catholicism and book, “The Middle East Policy of Nazi Germany,” the Legacy of German Occupation,” and in May deliv- which includes a research trip this May – June to the ered the annual Milewski Lecture in Polish Studies at Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau. Central Connecticut State University. He will be presenting the paper “Hachscharah und Professor Huener continues his research on the Pol- Aliyah-Beth: Jüdisch-zionistische Auswanderung in ish Roman Catholic Church under Nazi occupation, and den Jahren 1938-1941,” at the May conference “Jüdische to support this work he received a Career Enhancement Perspektiven auf die Jahre der ‘forcierten Auswan- Grant from the University of Vermont's Office of the derung’ bis zur Ghettosisierung und Deportation der Vice President for Research. He will be spending part of Juden aus dem Deutschen Reich, 1938-1941,” sponsored the summer working in the archives of the German For- by the Institut für die Geschichte der Juden in eign Office in Berlin and the Instytut Zachodni in Deutschland, Hamburg. Poznan. Over the last year Professor Susanna Schrafstetter's Professor Dennis Mahoney’s “’Tails of Hoffnung’: work has focused on the Third Reich's government offi- transatlantische Metamorphosen unterdrückter cials who survived the end of the Second World War Menschlichkeit in Marc Estrin’s Insect Dreams: The Half unscathed and continued their careers in postwar West Life of Gregor Samsa,” appeared in Kulturökologie und Lit- Germany. Her article on Karl M. Hettlage, Albert eratur: Beiträge zu einem transdisziplinären Paradigma der Speer's financial mastermind and unoffical deputy in Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Hubert Zapf. Heidelberg: Win- the Ministry of Armaments, was published in the Ger- ter, 2008, pp. 323-337. The article is about Marc Estrin's man Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte in the summer of continuation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, which imagines 2008 and a review of the article appeared in the national Gregor Samsa's futile efforts to encourage the United newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. States government to take action against Nazi Germany Professor Schrafstetter presented in November 2008 before 1939. a paper at the 10th bi-annual “Lessons and Legacies” Professor Mahoney also published, “’The bird and conference at Northwestern University, on Gustav A. the fish can fall in love’: Proverbs and Anti-Proverbs as Sonnenhol, a Nazi diplomat and SS officer who became Variations on the Theme of Racial and Cultural Inter- West German Ambassador to South Africa in 1968. mingling in The Time of Our Singing,” in The Proverbial In addition, Professor Schrafstetter continued her “Pied Piper”: A Festschrift Volume of Essays in Honor of work on reparations for victims of Nazism. Her article Wolfgang Mieder on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, on the Anglo-German 1964 agreement for compensation ed. Kevin J. McKenna (New York: Lang, 2009). In his to victims of Nazism appeared in the journal Contempo- interpretation of The Time of Our Singing, he traces the rary European History in the spring of 2008. During the origin of “The bird and the fish can fall in love, but summer of 2009 Susanna hopes to make good progress where will they build their nest”—an allegedly old Jew- on her book on reparations for victims of Nazism in ish proverb—to Fiddler and the Roof, and then discusses Great Britain. its function in this novel on the marriage of an African- Professor Helga Schreckenberger of the Depart- American singer and a German-Jewish mathematician ment of German and Russian delivered the twentieth and refugee from Nazi Germany who meet and fall in annual Harry H. Kahn Memorial Lecture at UVM, “A love at Marian Anderson's Easter 1939 concert on the Jewish Quest for Belonging: Ruth Beckermann's Film, Washington Mall. The Paper Bridge (1987).” Professor Francis Nicosia completed his service as Professor David Scrase of the Department of Ger- the interim director of the Miller Center, and assumed man and Russian presented two lectures in Australia. the Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professorship of The first, delivered at the Jewish Museum in Sydney, Holocaust Studies at UVM. His inaugural lecture, “The addressed rescue during the Holocaust. The second, Volume 13, Number 2 Page 3 Faculty News (continued) The Fifth Miller Symposium presented at the University of Sydney, dealt with Holo- (Continued from page 1) caust fabrications. Professor Scrase has in preparation a ernment bureaucracy and professions was complete. piece on the conductor Rudolf Schwarz entitled, “From Jarausch identified three levels of professional in- the Berlin Kubu Orchestra to the Bournemouth Sym- volvement in the Third Reich. First, he described the pas- phony Orchestra.” sive facilitators who enthusiastically supported the gov- Professor Alan E. Steinweis joined the faculty at ernment and allowed the state to continue to function.

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