Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien

[𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞] Conference "Mixed Couples in Europe under Axis Rule"

Day three of the "Mixed Couples" conference at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History!

Today, we will conclude the conference with two final panels, "Agency, Resistance, and Survival" and "Religious Institutions and Dynamics of Agency and Belonging", followed by a closing roundtable featuring historians Doris Bergen, Michael Brenner, Andrea Löw, Elisabeth Anthony, and Petre Matei.

If you want to learn more about the "Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency" project, please follow this link: https://shorturl.at/2YjxA

The conference is jointly organized by the Center for Holocaust Studies at the IfZ and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Photos: IfZ Press Office.

[𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞] Conference "Mixed Couples in Europe under Axis Rule"

Our “Mixed Couples” conference has just kicked off at the IfZ in Munich. Over the next three days, scholars from various countries will explore the experiences, agency, and survival strategies of intermarried families under National Socialist rule in nine thematic panels.

Tomorrow evening, historian Doris Bergen (University of Toronto) will deliver the keynote lecture at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum Munich (7:30 pm CET): “In and Out of View: Locating ‘Mixed Couples’ in Histories of War and Genocide”.

The conference is jointly organized by the Center for Holocaust Studies at the IfZ and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

More information about the conference:
https://shorturl.at/v7OQI

Details on the keynote lecture:
https://shorturl.at/yE8A9

[𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭] [𝐄𝐇𝐑𝐈] Ehri-cz Webinar featuring Aneta Plzáková and Maria Dermentzi
„EHRI-CZ Portal: Integrating Holocaust-Related Data Across Institutions“
17 June 2026, 3:00 pm on Zoom
No registration required

In this interactive webinar, Aneta Plzáková and Maria Dermentzi introduce a new research Portal currently developed by the Czech National Node of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI-CZ). The EHRI-CZ Portal brings together heterogeneous Holocaust-related data from multiple institutions through a unified interface. It integrates archival descriptions, victim databases, digital collections, geospatial information, and contextual resources while addressing challenges such as multilinguality, differing metadata standards, and varying levels of data granularity. The session will also include a demonstration of selected portal features and an opportunity to provide feedback that will inform future development.

Find more information as well as the Zoom link here: https://shorturl.at/4ZlHY

Join the next EHRI on Wednesday 17 June, 3:00 PM CET on Zoom! https://www.ehri-project.eu/ehri-webinar-17-june-ehri-cz-portal-integrating-holocaust-related-data-across-institutions/

[𝐄𝐇𝐑𝐈] New contribution to the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure's Document Blog
Olga Stefan: "'A Child is Born': The Mysterious Case of Harry Wapniarka"

In the most recent contribution to the EHRI Blog, Olga Stefan uses the expressionist artist Aurel Mărculescu’s woodcut 'Motherhood' as a starting point to reconstruct the story of a child born in the Romanian camp of Vapniarka. By piecing together various historical sources, Stefan identifies the child depicted in the artwork as Harry Wapniarka. The post concludes with Wapniarka’s personal account of the circumstances surrounding his birth.

Find the Blog post here: https://shorturl.at/ne6eY

Image: Aurel Marculescu, Motherhood, Ghetto and Camp, Cuvintul Liber, 1947, in The Future of Memory Collection, www.thefutureofmemory.ro.

[𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭] Keynote lecture by Doris Bergen
"In and Out of View. Locating 'Mixed Couples' in Histories of War and Genocide"
18 June 2026, 7:30 pm (CET)
NS-Dokumentationszentrum, Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1, 80333 Munich

As part of the international conference 'Mixed Couples in Europe under Axis Rule', jointly organised by our Center and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, historian Doris Bergen (University of Toronto) will deliver a public keynote lecture. Drawing on the experiences of “mixed couples” – spouses and lovers who crossed religious, racial, political, social, or national boundaries – the lecture explores how exclusionary regimes impose lines of violence through nations, communities, families, and individual lives.

The conference 'Mixed Couples in Europe under Axis Rule' will explore the experiences, agency, and survival strategies of intermarried families under National Socialist rule and will examine their significance for an integrated history of the Holocaust. The event will take place in Munich from 17 to 19 June 2026 at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History.

Further information on the keynote lecture can be found here: https://shorturl.at/yE8A9

Find the full conference programme here: https://shorturl.at/v7OQI

[𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐩] H-Diaries Team Meeting at the IMEC-Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine in Caen

For a two-day-working meeting, the H-Diaries team met in May at the IMEC, located in the historic Abbaye d’Ardenne, near Caen, where they discussed the organization and long-term management of digitized diaries and archival metadata as well as future archival work. In their blog, our colleagues note: "The conversations once again highlighted that diaries cannot easily be reduced to stable categories; rather, they often combine multiple forms of writing and documentation within a single object."

Find the whole blog entry here: https://shorturl.at/UVRrb

Read about our team meeting in an old abbey in Caen, which is now used as a library and archive (IMEC): https://holocaust-diaries.com/blog5.html

[𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰] Natalia Aleksiun — "Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency“ project

Natalia Aleksiun is the Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies and Interim Director of the UF Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. She holds doctoral degrees from the University of Warsaw and New York University. Her research focuses on the Holocaust in East Central Europe.

She is the author of Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (2021) and Where to? The Zionist Movement in Poland, 1944–1950 (2002), and the editor of Gershon Taffet’s The Destruction of the Jews of Zolkiew (2019). She has also co-edited The Cambridge History of the Holocaust: The Victims and Their Worlds, 1939–1945 (2025), The Rescue Turn and the Politics of Holocaust Memory (2024), Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 36, Jewish Childhood in Eastern Europe (2024), Entanglements of War: Social Networks during the Holocaust (2023), and Places, Spaces and Voids in the Holocaust (2021).

During her stay in Munich, she will conduct research on mixed marriages in western Ukraine during the Holocaust and complete a biography of Philip Friedman.

Find out more about the "Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency" project: https://shorturl.at/kL3Mo

[𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫] [𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬] Conny Kristel Fellowship Programme
Deadline for applications: 7 June 2026

There is still time to apply for the Conny Kristel Fellowship Programme offered by the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure which we are delighted that our Center is once again part of!

The current call invites applications from researchers, librarians, archivists, curators, and other relevant professionals at all career stages — including PhD students — working on projects across all aspects of Holocaust history: from its prehistory and the rise of antisemitism, to its aftermath and legacy, as well as challenges in the archival management of Holocaust-related sources.
Alongside our Center, all Ehri-de partners (Bundesarchiv, the Arolsen Archives the Fritz Bauer Institut, the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa - GWZO) act as host institutions for the programme in Germany.
The duration of the fellowship is determined in consultation with the host institution(s), but must be at least one week and no longer than six weeks. Fellowships must begin before 31 December 2027.

Further information on the Programme, as well as the network of participating institutions in Europe and beyond can be found here: https://shorturl.at/TmVh8

EHRI-ERIC Call for Applications | Conny Kristel Fellowship Programme 2026 Applications for the Conny Kristel Fellowship Programme 2026 are now open. Submit your application before midnight CET on June 7, 2026 and join us as a fellow! About the programme Our fellowship programme facilitates international access to a broad range of archives and collections related to the Ho...

[𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭] H-Diaries Webinar with Nina Siegal
„Holocaust Diaries during World War II in the Netherlands“
10 June 2026, 3:30 pm - 5pm (CET)
Registration required

Next week, the French-German H-Diaries project, co-led by our Center, will host the fifth webinar of the series "The Use of Holocaust Diaries by Historians".

In this session, Nina Siegal will offer insights into her research on Holocaust diaries from the Netherlands. Drawing on selected sources from the NIOD Archives in Amsterdam, she will discuss individual experiences during World War II, the challenges of historical research, and the creation of her book „The Diary Keepers“ (published by ECCO/HarperCollins in 2023), which tells the story of World War II and the Holocaust in the Netherlands, mostly through the original words of the diarists.

Find out more about the online event as well as the upcoming webinars here: https://shorturl.at/yG9to