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The Holocaust in Poland left hundreds of towns and villages that had previously had large Jewish populations empty.  However, important Jewish sites like synagogues and cemeteries remained.  

Polish communities were then confronted with what do with these places.  In this fascinating conversation with Yechiel Weizman, we talk about his work in researching this and how some communities attempted to destroy these places and how some were were quite literally haunted by their Holocaust past.

Yechiel Weizman is a lecturer in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University.

Weizman, Yechiel. Unsettled Heritage: Living next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces after the Holocaust (2022)

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Ultimately, the story of the Holocaust is one centered in places:  where something happened, where someone was from, where someone wanted to go.  In this episode, I talked with two scholars about the role of geography in the Holocaust but also about how we use geographical approaches and methodologies to ask (and answer new important historical questions. 

Anne Kelly Knowles is the McBride Professor of History at the University of Maine.

Tim Cole is a professor of social history at the University of Bristol.

Knowles, Anne Kelly, Tim Cole, and Paul Jaskot. Geographies of the Holocaust (2014)

Cole, Tim. Holocaust City: The Making of a Jewish Ghetto (2003)

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How does one talk with a Holocaust survivor about their experiences?  What is the role of survivor testimony in understanding the Holocaust?  In this episode, I talk with psychologist, Holocaust scholar, and playwright Hank Greenspan about his lifetime of talking with survivors and what he has learned from that experience.

Henry “Hank” Greenspan is an emeritus psychologist, oral historian and playwright at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who has been interviewing, writing about, and teaching about Holocaust survivors since the 1970s.

Greenspan, Henry. On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Beyond Testimony (2010)

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The Nazis first targeted mentally and physically disabled Germans for mass killing, before they targeted Jews.  However, discrimination and ableist thought predated the Nazis and followed them into the postwar era.

In this episode, I talk with Dagmar Herzog about both the Nazi “euthanasia” campaign, but also the larger context of discrimination against disabled people.  We also talk about those who tried to care for these vulnerable people as well as those who lobbied for their recognition as Nazi victims and for their rights in general in the postwar era.

Dagmar Herzog is a Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Herzog, Dagmar. The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century (2024)

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In this episode, I talked with Jacob Flaws about the spaces of Treblinka.  His work analyses this extermination camp from a spatial perspective, focusing on the physical and ideological boundaries of the camp.  His work shows that the fences of the camp did not contain the truth of its existence and he details the ways in which the local population from the surrounding area interacted with the Nazi killing process and its victims.

Jacob Flaws is an assistant professor of history at Kean University.

Flaws, Jacob. Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (2024)

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Philosopher Theodore W. Adorno famously said that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”  Here he gives an example of the way that many thinkers and philosophers struggled with the post-Holocaust world.  In this episode, I talked with philosopher and Holocaust scholar John K. Roth about the ways that philosophy approaches the Holocaust and how Nazi genocide challenges our understanding of the world. 

John K. Roth is Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College.

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At least 2 million Jews were murdered by mass shooting in the Soviet Union.  The perpetrators responsible for most of these killings were the men of the Einsatzgruppen.  In this week’s episode, I talk with Jürgen Mathäus about the history of these units, their evolution from 1938 on, and the role they played in the Holocaust.

Jürgen Mathäus is the director of the Applied Research Program at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The views expressed in this segment are those of the speaker; they do not necessarily represent the opinions of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Matthäus, Jürgen, Jochen Böhler, and Klaus-Michael Mallmann. War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland (2014)

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What was the relationship between Christianity?  Could one be both a Nazi and a Christian?  What was the relationship between religious antisemitism and other forms of Jew hatred?  On today’s episode, I talked with Richard Steigmann-Gall about these difficult but important questions.  

Richard Steigmann-Gall is an associate professor of history at Kent State University.

Steigmann-Gall, Richard. The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945(2009)

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What is it like to visit a Nazi extermination camp or even a Holocaust site in general?  Last year, I was fortunate enough to travel to Poland with three friends to a number of camps and Holocaust-related sites and museums.  I thought I would do something different in this episode and invite them to talk about their experiences.

Stuart Bertie is an architect and photographer with strong family connections to WW2. He has photographed for the National WW2 Museum, and is currently working on the Band of Brothers Currahee to Normandy documentary project.

Mary Brazier is a Mental Health Social Worker in the NHS with an MA in military history and a special interest in psychiatry in the Second World War.

Lesley Moore is an accountant that is interested in the history of the Holocaust during WW2, in particular Operation Reinhard. She has recently starting guiding Holocaust tours in Krakow, Poland

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The wife of Nazi camp commandant Karl Koch, Ilse, became a lasting symbol of the evil and depravity of the Nazi state.  She was accused of a variety of crimes and underwent three trials, including one by the Nazis themselves.  However, there is more to the story.

In this episode, I talk with Tomaz Jardim about the real Ilse Koch and he unpacks the three trials as well as how the Ilse Koch ascended as the mythic epitome of Nazi evil.

Tomaz Jardim is a professor of history at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Jardim, Tomaz. Ilse Koch on Trial: Making the “Bitch of Buchenwald” (2024) 

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Email the podcast at [email protected]

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.