Timm Ebner
Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 05/2016)

The colonial literature of National Socialism. Figures of the traitor ‘behind the scenes of world theatre’ Beginning from the loss of her colonies in the First World War until after the unconditional surrender of the ‘Third Reich’, German race ideology was characterised by a post-colonial situation strongly differing from the decolonisation processes of other colonial empires. This line-up also influenced antisemitic ideology which here will be examined in context with colonialism. Specimen for these examination will be the ‘völkisch’ and Nazi literature and films. Although the holdings in these field are immense – since these colonial topics boomed in the Nazi-era and were even more popular than in the times of the German colonial empire (alone between 1933 and 1945 more than 300 titles were published) -, they were widely neglected by historiography and cultural studies.

Timm Ebner, PhD at the Graduate School ‘Mediale Historiographien’ in Weimar/Erfurt/Jena in 2015, later working as a journalist, after that studies literature, modern history and philosophy at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin) and at Freie Universität (Berlin).

Caroline Cormier

Junior Fellow (04/2017 - 08/2017)

From Disenfranchisement to Displacement. The History and Commemoration of Jewish Homes and ‘Judenhäuser’ in Germany

This project examines the large-scale disruption to Jewish homes that took place in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Specifically, this research explores the displacement of Jews from their private resi-dences and their forced relocation into Nazi-designated ‘Jew Houses’ (Judenhäuser) in three of Germany’s major cities: Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg. Using contemporary memorials as a starting point, this study combines archival research with testimony from survivors, their heirs, and the post-war inhabitants of these sites to expand the visibility of the wartime histories and ongoing preservation efforts of these formerly Jewish living spaces.

Caroline Cormier is currently a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto, where she also received her M.A. in Geography and Planning in 2010. She received her B.A. (Honours) from Queen’s University in 2008. Past program participation includes: the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, the Holocaust Education Foundation Summer Institute, and the Zoryan Institute’s International Genocide and Human Rights Program. She is also a recipient of the Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies.

Susanne Barth

Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 05/2013)

The Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG and the Auschwitz Subcamp of Blechhammer 1939-1945

Based on newly accessible source material, this project investigates the history of the Oberschlesische Hydrierwerke AG, a synthetic fuel plant founded in Blechhammer (Upper Silesia) by the Reich Office for Economic Development in 1939. Along with nearly 20,000 foreign and forced labourers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe and Allied prisoners of war, Jewish inmates were made to work on the construction site. A forced labour camp for Jews was set up by the Reichsautobahn in March 1942. When it was taken over by Auschwitz in April 1944, it became its second-largest subcamp with a prisoner population of 4,000-6,000. This project examines the plant’s ideological and economic function in war-time Upper Silesia as well as the industrial elite’s co-operation with the Schmelt organisation and the Auschwitz extermination camp, while at the same time trying to reconstruct the daily life and suffering of Blechhammer prisoners.

Susanne Barth is a PhD candidate at the University of Oldenburg (Germany), from where she also received a Master’s degree in History and Political Science. In 2012, she was an EHRI-Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam and a Saul Kagan Claims Conference Academic Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies in 2012-13. Her main research interests are forced labour and social histories of the camps.

Laura Almagor

Junior Fellow (10/2015 - 08/2016)

A Forgotten Path. Jewish Territorialism as a Movement of Political Action and Ideology 1905-1960

The research project deals with the history of Jewish Territorialism as a movement of political action and thought and, more broadly, as an alternative Jewish way of becoming national during the first half of the twentieth century. The Jewish Territorialists, first organised in 1905 and represented during the interwar and post-war periods by the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation, searched for places of settlement for Jews outside Palestine. Even though it did influence the Freeland League's post-war endeavours, the Holocaust did not constitute a watershed moment for the organisation's aims and ambitions. From its very foundation, the movement's members had voiced explicit concerns about the threat that increasing European antisemitism posed to Jewish lives, culture and tradition. This study of Territorialist history aims to shed new light on the richness of twentieth century Jewish politics, as well as on the contemporary global debates that defined these politics.

Laura Almagor is a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in Florence and was a visiting researcher at UCLA's History Department, as well as a fellow in the 20th Summer Institute of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. Previously, she was affiliated with the Netherlands Institute for Military History. She has published on Jewish history, Dutch military history, and Second World War remembrance culture.

Ionuț Florin Biliuță
Junior Fellow (11/2014 - 06/2015)

Sowing the Seeds of Hate. The Antisemitism of the Orthodox Church in Interwar Romania

The aim of my research project is to perceive how antisemitism and eventually Holocaust entangled with the Romanian Orthodox Church’s theology in the interwar period. In order to better understand this radical shift in Orthodox theology and to accurately engulf the concept of ‚race‘ in a clear-cut theological framework, the focus of the project falls on three theologians (Nichifor Crainic, Fr. Ilie Imbrescu and Fr. Liviu Stan). They are perceived through the conceptual lenses of fascist studies, development of Christian doctrine and antisemitism in a typological manner. If Nichifor Crainic and Fr. Liviu Stan stand out as the representatives of the acculturated, highly-trained Orthodox theologian teaching in the university, Fr. Ilie Imbrescu embodies the lay missionary priest. As university professors and decision-makers in the state apparatus, they all played a significant role in the fascization of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Romanian state in the interwar period. They also brought their contribution to the creation of an Orthodox Exarchate in the conquered Ukraine during World War II.

Ionut Biliuta has a PhD in History from CEU (Budapest, Hungary) and is a PhD student in Theology at Babeş-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). He has been a Junior Research Fellow at “New Europe College. Institute for Advanced Studies” from Bucharest, Romania (2010-2011), “Leibniz Institute of European History” from Mainz, Germany (2011-2012), Junior Visiting Research Fellow at “Modern European History Research Centre” at Oxford University’s (2011). From October 2013 until late May, 2014 he was Tziporah Wiesel Fellow at “Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies”,United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC, USA). Together with Professor Nadia Al-Bagdadi and Dr. Anca Şincan he is editing Transforming a Church. Eastern Christianity in Post-Imperial Societies (Budapest: CEU University Press, 2014).

Tim Corbett
Junior Fellow (10/2014 - 08/2015)

The Place of my Fathers' Sepulchres - The Jewish Cemeteries in Vienna

This project explores Vienna's historical Jewish cemeteries as sites of culture, identity and memory that trace the rise of the city's great and influential Jewish culture and its almost total destruction during the Shoah. The creation, extension and maintenance of these sites, the attempts that were made during the Shoah to appropriate and destroy them as well as the continuing discussion on their restoration and maintenance provide the basis for an in-depth analysis of the political and cultural relationship between Viennese Jewry and the City of Vienna in the past and the present. The tombstone inscriptions spell out the development of a specifically Viennese code of Jewish cultural identification before the Shoah and of conflicting approaches to re-establishing Jewish life after it. The cemeteries are analysed as spaces and as texts that cover a wide spectrum of modern Viennese history, demonstrating that they are both witnesses to and actors in the complex and often controversial Jewish history of Vienna and its significant memorial sites.

Tim Corbett is PhD candidate at Lancaster University, working on The Place of my Fathers’ Sepulchres: The Jewish Cemeteries in Vienna. Lancaster University stipend, numerous research and travel grants. Research stays and presentations in Austria, Germany, Israel and USA; studied Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Publications on Jewish Vienna forthcoming. Associate Lecturer in the History Department and Assistant Dean in the Graduate College at Lancaster University.

István Pál Ádám

Junior Fellow (03/2014 – 08/2014)

"Bystanders" to Genocide? The Role of Building Managers in the Hungarian Holocaust.

This project examines the role of an understudied group of everyday Hungarians in World War II: Budapest building managers, caretakers in Hungarian: the házmester, or in German der Hausmeister. In June 1944, the Hungarian government – when setting up a ghetto – separated the Jewish and Christian residents of Budapest not by entire quarters, but by assigning certain buildings as “Jewish houses”. The building managers of these approximately 2,000 houses did not officially belong to any authority; nevertheless, on a daily basis they were responsible for enforcing discriminative regulations. They acted as intermediaries between the authorities and the Jewish citizens, which gave them much wider latitude than other so-called bystanders. I am using the files of a post-war denazifying process, testimonies, autobiographical sources and contemporary journals to show how this otherwise insignificant group of ordinary Hungarians gained power over the Jewish Hungarian citizens.

István Pál Ádám, LL.D., entered the Central European University`s History MA program after working years in a compensation project for Holocaust survivors. At the moment, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, where his work is supervised by Drs. Josie McLellan and Tim Cole. In 2012, he was the recipient of an EHRI fellowship at Yad Vashem. From December 2012 until June 2013, Ádám continued his research at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Eva Reder
Junior Fellow (10/2013 – 08/2014)

Pogroms in Poland 1918-1920 and 1945/1946: Triggers, Motives, Practices of Violence

The project analyses pogroms in Poland comparing the periods 1918-20 and 1945/46, focusing on the triggers of pogroms, the role of the emerging statehood as well as the perpetrators’ self-perception. In both reference periods, pogrom violence referred closely to the establishment of Polish statehood, even though this happened under divergent circumstances. Both phases involved exceptionally large numbers of pogroms. In both cases profound socio-political ruptures and paradigm shifts took place, where the need to create enemies was tremendous. An examination of the perpetrators’ verbal utterances and actions during and after the pogrom allows to identify their symbolic reference points, which express anti-Semitic stereotypes and show how the pogromists defined their relations towards state authorities. The project will offer insights about prejudices during transitional phases, the dynamics of pogroms and how narratives of violence are preserved. The pogroms are re¬constructed by means of eyewitness accounts, military records and court files.

Eva Reder, doctoral student at the University of Vienna, Department of Eastern European History and Department of Contemporary History. Dissertation project (Working title): Pogroms in Poland 1918-1920 and 1945/46. After being a journalist in Vienna, she did archival research in Poland and Ukraine in 2009. From 2010-2013 she was a research associate at the Österreichische Mediathek, Technisches Museum Wien. Fellow at Herder-Institut, Marburg and German Historical Institute, Warsaw (2012/2014). 

Eva Waibel
Junior Fellow (04/2013 – 09/2013)

Austro-Fascism, National Socialism and Holocaust in post-Nazi Theatre. Politics of History and Cultural Practice 1955-1970

This research project focusses on the interchange of strategies of history of politics and cultural practice. The Viennese theatre will be analysed in order to research its role in the process of constructing history and identities regarding Austro-Fascism, National Socialism and the Holocaust in the time between 1955 and 1970. Discourse analysis and performance theory methods will be used in order to investigate theatre texts and productions of constructions of history and the Self. Furthermore, processes of production and reception will be analysed in the context of attempts to direct cultural politics and against the backdrop of political developments, antisemitism, xenophobia and restoration in the daily life of the 1950s and 1960s.

Eva Waibel studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies as well as History at the University of Vienna and the Free University Berlin. Since 2001, she has worked on concept and organization for various theatre and art projects in Vienna and Berlin. 2007 to 2010 she worked in marketing and cultural cooperation for the daily newspaper Der Standard. Since 2008 dramaturge in the independent theatre scene in Vienna.

Christina Winkler
Junior Fellow (04/2014 – 08/2014)

The Russian view on the Shoah: Official remembrance versus individual memory of the Holocaust in contemporary Russia – a comparison.

As the legal successor to the Soviet Union, public remembrance of the war and Nazi Germany’s Soviet victims lies with the Russian Federation. But even though more than two million Holocaust victims were Soviet citizens, the Nazi genocide is strangely absent in Russia’s official memory of World War II. Gorbachev’s politics of ‘Glasnost’ changed public remembrance dramatically. Following a period of transition during the Yeltsin era, today Russia has returned to the Soviet narrative of the heroic victory over fascism, a unifying link the majority of Russians identify with. But as memory studies have shown, there is always an exchange between the personal memories of an individual and the collective memory of the social group to which a person belongs. My dissertation aims to identify and analyze this exchange by comparing collective forms of remembrance to forms of historical transmission and individual memories of people living near former killing sites. I’m focusing my research on the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia's largest Holocaust site.

Christina Winkler, born in Flensburg, Germany, MA in Slavic Studies and Macroeconomics (1999), as well as in Holocaust Studies (2009). Has worked at the Goethe Institute in Volgograd (2000-2001), the Otto Benecke Foundation (2002), the „Petersburger Dialog“ (2002-2005) as well as the program „Journalists International“ of the Freie Universität Berlin (2006-2009). Since 2010 doctoral scholarship student at the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the University of Leicester and the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich Studienwerk in Berlin (2011-2013).