CfP for panel for Lessons and Legacies Conference

Zeit: 30.10.-02.11.2008
Ort: Evanston, IL
Deadline: 01.10.2007

Gesine Gerhard is organizing a panel for the Lessons and Legacies Conference, sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation and Northwestern University in Evanston, IL on October 30-November 2, 2008. I am seeking panelists for a session on “Confronting the Past: Living with the Legacy of their Parents (or Spouse).”

The idea for this panel came out of my current research on Herbert Backe, the second man in the Nazi agricultural administration who oversaw food rations in Germany and the occupied territories in the East during World War II. Under his leadership, two million Soviet POWs died of starvation and mistreatment within the first year after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Backe committed suicide in 1947 awaiting his trial in the Nuremberg prison. In my research I have come across fascinating personal documents including letters and diaries from his wife. I have also talked to the children of Herbert Backe. This brought up interesting questions about how the family has dealt with the memory of their father.

Many recent publications in academic and popular presses address the topic of memory. This panel would provide a forum to share and compare stories historians have come across in their research on Holocaust perpetrators and the legacy these Nazi perpetrators have left for their families.

If you have ideas for a paper along those lines (the title and exact focus of the panel is a work in progress and open for suggestions), please email me at ggerhard[at]pacific.edu. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Gesine Gerhard
Associate Professor of European History
University of the Pacific
Stockton, CA
ggerhard[at]pacific.edu

URL des CfP: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=7929