Andrij Kudrjatschenko

Fellows from Ukraine (10/2022-12/2022)

Holocaust: Ukrainian Discourse, European Context

The most important representative states of Holocaust remembrance as a morally and politically influential form of collective memory were initially Germany, Israel, and the USA. However, the rupture of civilisation was and is highly relevant for all democracies in Europe. The topic of the Holocaust has a different status in Ukrainian academia than in Western Europe. After all, for the West, the Holocaust is a cornerstone of the memory of the Second World War and is regarded as the most expressive symbol of the crimes of National Socialism as well as the central historical event of the 20th century, which led to a profound reconsideration of European history since the Enlightenment. The topic of the Holocaust also plays an important and topical role in the consideration of Ukrainian history. At the same time, Ukrainian realities point to complications in the perception of this topic. The aim of the present project is to work out the Ukrainian specifics of this way of looking at things in comparison with the Western European representation.

Andriy Kudryachenko, Professor of Contemporary History, Director of the Institute of World History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Diplomat, Envoy of the Embassy of Ukraine in the Federal Republic of Germany (1998-2000 in Bonn and Berlin), Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (since 2018). Chairman of the journal editorial board Problems of World History, member of several editorial boards of journals in Ukraine and abroad. DAAD scholarship holder Göttinger Arbeitskreis, Stadtbibliothek Berlin (November-December 2008).
Fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (July 2020, July 2021 Washington, DC). Fellow of the Institute of Contemporary History (October-November 2021). His research fields are Holocaust, famine in Ukraine, Ukrainian-German relations in the mid-20th to early 21st century, historical memory of Ukrainians. His current research focuses on Ukrainian discourse and the European context of the Holocaust.