Viktoria Soloschenko

Fellows from Ukraine (08/2022-09/2022)

Confiscations and Traces of Cultural Property of Ukrainian Jews During the Holocaust 

There is still a need for a thorough and multifaceted analysis of the problem of the spoliation of Jewish cultural property during the occupation of Eastern Europe. The looting of Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust was both officially ordered as well as carried out by private individuals. This concerns those collections and individual items that were expropriated from their legitimate owners during the National Socialist era.
The Holocaust in the East was a violent model that differs fundamentally from the history of the Holocaust in Western Europe. Did some of these cultural objects also belong to Ukrainian Jewish families? Under what pressure were they confiscated? In order to find confiscated cultural property and its owners or successors, it is central to work out the dimensions of the problem.

Viktoria Soloshenko holds a PhD in contemporary history and is deputy director of the Institute of World History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She has held fellowships at the Centre for Historical Research Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (September 2015), the Central Institute for Art History in Munich (Winter Academy, February 2016), the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission (DUHK) at Ludwig Maximilian University (September to October 2017), the Herder Institute for Historical Research on Eastern and Central Europe in Marburg (December 2018), the Institute of Contemporary History (November to December 2021) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington (July 2021).
Her research fields include Nazi looted art, restitution, the Holocaust in Ukraine, and Ukrainian-German cultural relations from the mid-20th to the beginning of the 21st century. Her current research topic focuses on Nazi looted art with a special emphasis on "Confiscations and Traces of Cultural Assets of Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust".