CHGS banner
CHGS News May/June 2015
From the Director

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is completing a very active academic year, filled with events that reaffirmed our core approach of connecting scholarly inquiry, education, and outreach to different sectors of society.

 

In a few weeks we will host a four-day workshop for educators titled "Holocaust Education in a Global Context", which will explore the opportunities and challenges of teaching the Holocaust in Minnesota classrooms. The workshop will deepen the educators' understanding of the history and aftermath of the Holocaust and address the Holocaust's universal significance in fostering a culture of respect for human rights. We will engage with frequently asked questions and misconceptions about the Holocaust and examine both its similarities and differences with other genocides, some of which happened in our and our students' backyards.

 

After an intense semester I want to take the opportunity to thank all who make our programs a success: a wonderful group of affiliate faculty and colleagues across campus, dedicated and enthusiastic staff, engaged students and big-hearted friends in the community.

 

Thank you all for your engagement, and best wishes for a pleasant and fruitful summer!

 

Alejandro Baer

Congratulations to Yagmur Karakaya, Badzin Fellow for the 2015-2016 Academic Year

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of History are pleased to announce the 2015-2016 Bernard and Fern Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Yagmur Karakaya

Yagmur Karakaya is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in collective memory, popular culture and narratives of history. Yagmur is currently working on her dissertation project on Ottomania, which focuses on contemporary interest in the Ottoman past in Turkey. She is interested in how different groups of minorities engage with the ways in which Ottoman past is recalled and how they situate themselves in this narrative. During her Badzin Graduate Fellowship year, she will focus on the commemoration of the Holocaust in Turkey, and the relative silence on the Armenian genocide situating both of these phenomena in the current political interest in the Ottoman past. This project will engage with current debates regarding memorialization and denial in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies within the context of Turkey. She will be focusing on two major non-Muslim minorities in Turkey: the Jewish and Armenian population, conducting interviews with the members. 

Congratulations to the 2015 Undergraduate Human Rights Award Winners 
Aisha Galaydh and Kenneth Gonzales

Each spring, the Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies celebrate the tremendous work of students in human rights.  This year we congratulate Aisha Galayd and Kenneth Gonzales, recipients of the Inna Meiman Award and Sullivan Ballou Award, respectively.
Events
Upcoming Teacher Workshop
June 15-18, 2015
1210 Heller Hall, West Bank, University of Minnesota

The genocide of the Jews during World War II has become a global reference point to raise awareness about state violence and human rights abuses. This summer institute will explore the opportunities and challenges of Holocaust education and memorialization in diverse cultural contexts. The institute will address the historical and sociological significance of the Holocaust in a comparative genocide framework (Native American, Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides) and provide hands-on activities for teachers to use with students in the classroom.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is pleased to partner with the Institute for Global Studies to offer an annual summer workshop on Holocaust and genocide education as professional development for educators in the community.  Registration for the 2015 institute filled up early, and we are looking forward to a great workshop, with sessions to include history and overview of the Holocaust, the concept of genocide, Holocaust fiction, colonial genocides, and teaching with audiovisual testimonials and further resources for research.

The 2015 Holocaust summer institute is made possible by the Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation.
Upcoming Community Event
TMORA exhibit on the Armenian Genocide
June 20-22, 2015
The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis

The exhibit, running June 20-22, reveals various facets of the genocide, including the deportations, executions, massacres, murders, starvation, extermination and destruction. It also documents the immediate aftermath of the atrocities, attesting to the catastrophic destruction of the Armenian society in the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The scale and depth of the uprooting of the Armenian people are revealed through twenty-four panels filled with photographs, documents and explanatory texts

Upcoming Lecture
Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Exhibition 
Hibakusha (atomic bomb victim)
September, 2015
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Ms. Harada will speak at the University of Minnesota as part of events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of World War II and the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the friendship between St. Paul and Nagasaki as sister cities.
Upcoming Events
Screenshot from 'As If', a film on the Czech city of Terez�n (Theresienstadt)
October, 2015
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Internationally renowned artist Daniel Blaufuks has been exploring the relations between public and private, and individual and collective memory and history in photography, film, and book art.  Born in Lisbon to German Jewish refugees, recent projects have included found footage and current shots of the Nazi concentration camp in Theresienstadt.  Events to include a talk with the artist and film screening of his work. 
Upcoming Lecture
Adam Muller, University of Manitoba 
November 19, 2015
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
In Review
By Arta Ankrava

On April 23-25 the Center for Holocaust and Genocide studies, along with the Human Rights Program, Institute for Global Studies and the Ohanessian Chair, marked the centennial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 with a series of events. This included a keynote by Middle East scholar Bedross Der Matossian, an international student conference titled "One Hundred Years of Genocide: Remembrance, Education, Prevention", a teacher workshop on World War I and the Armenian Genocide, as well as a guided tour of Bdote, a sacred Dakota site at Ft. Snelling State Park led by Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair.

 

Keynote talk, "The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency"
Professor Bedross Der Matossian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The three-day program was opened by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Lecture, also serving as keynote for the international student conference, delivered by Professor Bedross Der Matossian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His talk was titled "The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency", and gave a comprehensive overview of the different approaches to studying and interpreting the Armenian Genocide, highlighting the importance of multi-causal interpretations and micro-historical approaches to understanding the emergence and execution of the genocide.

 

Conference presenters and participants

 

The international student conference on April 24 addressed the topic of one hundred years of genocide from different aspects, and saw student presenters from Armenia, Hungary, the UK, and US. It was moderated by Der Matossian and UMN professors Joachim Savelsberg, Barbara Frey, and Alejandro Baer. First, Angel Amirjanyan and Varduhi Gumruyan delivered their presentations on the psychological effects of genocide and posttraumatic stress in Armenia via Skype, identifying a clear thread of trauma as inherited. Both scholars spoke of the still notable effects of the genocide, even in their generation, manifesting in lack of confidence, inferiority complex, and hesitance to interact with Turkish youth. Both presenters also noted the importance of engaging in a dialogue about the past, and making connections with their Turkish counterparts, in order to minimize tension between the two communities. They also noted, however, that in order for healing to occur, a clear recognition of the events of 1915 as genocide on behalf of Turkey must happen. Peter Kranitz presented on the fate of Armenian refugees in Constantinople, including the problematic "repatriation" of displaced Armenians to the new Soviet Republic from former Ottoman territories.

 

Conference presenters and participants

 

The second session addressed Armenian and Turkish relations after the genocide. Vahram Ayvazyan spoke about the discrepancies between official state and unofficial, civic society, NGO discourse on the genocide and ways of moving forward, noting that the former is at times inflexible. Torkom Movsesyan raised the question of whether having international judicial bodies tackle the issue of the Armenian Genocide might help mediate the situation, and motivate Turkey's recognition of the past events. Gevorg Petrosyan gave a presentation on Turkey's current policy of genocide denial, carried out through the "Shared Pain" discourse, which does not recognize the Armenian Genocide as such, but rather wraps it in with other World War I tragedies, as merely a casualty of the war, among others.

 

The conclusion of a successful day of presentations

 

The conference did not just address the Armenian Genocide, however. Lindsay Blahnik talked about the effects of punitive and restorative justice on social cohesion following the Rwandan Genocide, while Tom Dunn informed the audience about the problematic British intervention in the Sierra Leonean Civil War. Finally, Rebecca Shnabel presented on the problematic power relations associated with the translation process, as exemplified by Elie Wiesel's Night, wherein the original was significantly abridged and modified to be less disturbing to a post-World War II readership.  The conference was wrapped up by presentations by Kayla Nomina, speaking on the possibility to determine causal agents of genocide, and the potential for prevention; and Joe Eggers, who presented a comparison of the Native American and Armenian genocides, looking at the role of nationalism in both contexts.

 

Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair leads a discussion and tour at Ft. Snelling State Park

 

The discussions continued the next morning at Ft. Snelling State Park, where Professor Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, St. Cloud State University, led a tour of Dakota sites and history connected to both the genesis and genocide of the Dakota people: "Bdote" is the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, the sacred site of Dakota creation stories and the location of Fort Snelling, where many Dakota were imprisoned and died in in the 1860s. 

 

Concurrently, a Teacher Workshop on World War I and the Armenian Genocide was taking place on campus.  Sessions led by Der Matossian and UMN faculty, staff and community members illustrated various historical perspectives in Europe and the colonies at the imminent approach of World War I.

 

Teacher Workshop participants
Deborah Jane, Institute for Global Studies Outreach Coordinator


 
Over all, the three-day events highlighted the lasting traumatic effects of genocide, even several generations on, but also saw potential in new ways of dealing with the past, including recognizing micro-histories, establishing cultural exchanges, considering different and at times uneasy ways of approaching justice and reconciliation. While the conference also showed that each genocide is a unique event, some parallels were evident, even in contexts seemingly as distinct as US-Native American and Ottoman-Amenian relations.


 
Arta Ankrava holds an MA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London and is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in diasporic identity, transnationalism, and collective memory. Arta is working on a dissertation about anti-Communism in the Latvian American exile community during the Cold War and through the collapse of the USSR. It is based on her research in the Latvian American Periodicals Collection at the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

CHGS videos, newly available

Gabriel Gatti, University of the Basque Country 

November 20, 2014 

 

Surviving Forced Disappearance: Identity and Meaning
Surviving Forced Disappearance: Identity and Meaning


Yehudit Shendar, retired Deputy Director and Senior Art Curator, Yad Vashem
April 14, 2015
The Insatiable Pursuit of Art: Nazi Art Looting - Perpetrators, Victims, Provenance Researchers
The Insatiable Pursuit of Art: Nazi Art Looting - Perpetrators, Victims, Provenance Researchers

Bedross Der Matossian, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Ohanessian Lecture and keynote as part of student conference, "100 Years of Genocide: Remembrance, Education, Prevention"
April 23, 2015
The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency
The Armenian Genocide Historiography on the Eve of the Centennial: From Continuity to Contingency

Daniel Levy, Stoney Brook University
Keynote as part of International Symposium, "War, what is it good for? Uses and Abuses of Second World War History", on the 70th Anniversary of the Conclusion of WWII in Europe
May 8, 2015
The Past: Between History and Memory
The Past: Between History and Memory
Eye on Africa

#147notjustanumber

By Wahutu Siguru
 

On the 2nd of April my home country, Kenya, suffered its bloodiest terrorist attack in recent history. The attack by Al-Shabaab was at a university in the town of Garissa, close to the Kenya-Somali border. While it would be tempting to rant and rave about the causes of the attack, the lapse in Kenya's security forces, or even the almost non-existence of an official government response -- not only to the attack but the victims' and their families' plight and suffering -- I will not. Instead this month's article is on the 147 students that died, the almost equal number of students considered missing, and the hundreds more that survived and will always have these scars


 

No young person should have to worry that attending university may literally mean life or death. No parent should have to worry about whether or not sending their child to university and sacrificing pay for their tuition could mean exposing their child to terror. 147 is not just a number, it is brothers, sisters, children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, boyfriends, girlfriends, future professionals and future parents. For the parents of the victims, 147 represents 147 bright futures now extinguished. As one parent tearfully said on television, "we sold everything to send our child to school, now that they are dead I am left with nothing."

 

 

Was Kenya caught by surprise? No. The British embassy had issued a travel advisory to its citizens and one of the areas mentioned was Garissa. The U.S. embassy also mentioned that there was intelligence that a public university would be attacked. Indeed there are reports that there was a circular sent to all public institutions and eventually to students asking them to be extra vigilant. The government even sent police officers (albeit not enough) to the institutions. A simple Venn diagram would have highlighted the areas the government needed to put more emphasis on -- this is not hindsight speaking, it is basic common sense. 

 

Despite all of this, here I am writing about the death of 147 university students. Here I am writing about the erasure of Kenya's diversity. Having attended university in Kenya, I, like several of my Kenyan friends, cannot shake the thought that I could easily have been amongst the 147. We were lucky, that's all. As CHGS and the community commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, and as we say a prayer for victims of mass atrocities and genocides since and before 1915 (such as the genocide of the Herero of Namibia), light a candle for the 147 from Kenya.

 

Wahutu Siguru is Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru's research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.  

Book of the Month
A Good Place to Hide: How One French Village Saved Thousands of Lives During World War II
By Peter Grose

Publisher: Pegasus
April 2015
Pages: 352

A Good Place to Hide is the story of an isolated community in south-central France, Le Chambon, that conspired to save the lives of 3,500 Jews under the noses of the Germans and the soldiers of Vichy France. It is the story of a pacifist Protestant pastor who broke laws and defied orders to protect the lives of total strangers. Powerful and richly told, the book speaks to the courage of ordinary people who offered sanctuary, kindness, solidarity and hospitality to people in desperate need, knowing full well the consequences to themselves.

Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia
By Michelle Caswell

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
April 2014
Pages: 246

Roughly 1.7 million people died in Cambodia from untreated disease, starvation, and execution during the Khmer Rouge reign of less than four years in the late 1970s. The regime's brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of "enemies of the state" were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable, Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering.
Film
Watchers of the Sky
A review by Joe Eggers

Documentary, 2014.

Six decades after he first coined the term genocide, Raphael Lemkin's life has made it to the silver screen. In Watchers of the Sky director Edet Belzberg takes viewers through the efforts of Lemkin to get the crime of genocide recognized by the international community and the United Nations.

 

Throughout the movie, activists, scholars and experts share their reflections on the legacy of Lemkin's tireless dedication to pursuing justice for victims of atrocities around the world. Among those interviewed is Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the UN and author of A Problem from Hell, which served as an inspiration for the documentary.

 

Watchers of the Sky is a beautiful film. Its use of animation brings to life the the largely untold story of the man who defined humanity's most heinous crime. However, more important than the film's visuals is its message. By juxtaposing the events that shaped Lemkin's early life and views against modern crimes, including the former Yugoslavia and Darfur, Belzberg's paints a clear picture: despite genocide being defined for more than 60 years, we're no closer to preventing it now than Lemkin was during his own lifetime. With such a heavy message, it's easy to write the movie off as a depressing look at history and humanity. The reality couldn't be further from the truth.

 

In addition to introducing viewers to a more in depth exploration of Lemkin, it profiles four individuals who have dedicated their lives to continuing Lemkin's work. In addition to ambassador Power, the film includes interviews with Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials and Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. However, it's the interviews with Emmanuel Uwurukundo, the UNHCR director of refugee camps in Chad, which really stand out. Mr. Uwurukundo, himself a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, oversees three camps housing thousands of refugees escaping the violence in Darfur. Despite his own experience and his work in the camps, two things are clear: his eternal optimism and his faith in humanity. Through these interviews with Mr. Uwurukundo and the others, Watchers of the Sky reinforces the need for hope and reason for optimism, even in the face of unspeakable atrocities.

 

If you missed Watchers in the Sky when it was released last year, you weren't alone. Its limited release meant it was shown mostly at festivals and single event showings, including an event organized by World Without Genocide last December. However, the film has since been released on DVD and is available to rent or purchase online through Netflix, Amazon or Google Play.

 

Joe Eggers is a second year student in the University of Minnesota's Masters of Liberal Studies program, studying human rights from a sociological perspective. His working thesis topic explores the cultural genocide experienced by Native American peoples. 

Support CHGS
In This Issue
From the Director
Upcoming Teacher Workshop: Holocaust Education in a Global Context
Upcoming Community Event: The First Deportation of the Armenian Genocide at TMORA
Fall Preview
Event Review: Centennial of the Armenian Genocide
CHGS Event Recordings, New Releases
Eye on Africa
Book of the Month
Film Review
University Libraries
In the News

Secondary Educator Opportunities

 

Holocaust Education in a Global Context Summer Institute

Follow Us!

Like us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterView our videos on YouTube
 WWW.CHGS.UMN.EDU