Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich) and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (Amsterdam); Michaela Raggam-Blesch and Laurien Vastenhout (Web)

Time: 17.-19.06.2026
Venue: IfZ – Institute for Contemporary History, Munich

The conference 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.

Programme (Web)

17.06.2026

• 13:30 Welcome and introduction

14:00 Panel 1: Perpetrators and Perpetration | Chair: Benjamin Frommer

• Lovro Kralj (EHRI Central Hub, Amsterdam): Intermarriage and the Entangled Dynamics of Perpetration and Victimhood in the Independent State of Croatia
• Ingo Loose (Institute for Contemporary History, Berlin): ”Mixed marriages” in the context of National Socialist Germanization plans in the annexed Polish territories. Between racial-legal foundations and social practice
• Ferenc Laczó and László Csősz (Maastricht University / Budapest): Intermarried Families in Hungary during the Last Phase of the Holocaust

15:45 Panel 2: Bureaucracy and the Legal Frameworks of Categorisation | Chair: Tatjana Lichtenstein

• Émilie Duranceau-Lapointe (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin): Prima Facie “Jewishness” – Civil Registrars and “Mixed” Bureaucratic and Legal Practices of Race in Nazi Berlin
• Linda Graul (University of Luxembourg): Between Protection and Precarity: Intermarriage and Jewish Dispossession in Luxembourg
• Niels Pohl-Schneeberger (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich): ”Mixed” Couples and Citizenship in the Holocaust. Transnational Dimension of A National Socialist “Problem Management”

17:30 Panel 3: Governing Race and “Mixed” Intimacy | Chair: Lovro Kralj

• Petre Matei (Elie Wiesel National Institute, Bucharest): Peripheral but Not Exempt from Persecution: Roma-Romanian “Mixed” Couples and Deportations to Transnistria
• Verena Meier (Forschungsstelle Antiziganismus, Heidelberg): Transnational Networks and Practices of Exclusion: Racial-Biological Assessments and “Mixed” Jewish and Romani Families in the Reich and Annexed Territories
• Soumyaditha Saha (University of Toronto): Race, Gender, and Law: Regulating South-Asian/German Intimacies across Empires

18.06.2026

09:30 Panel 4: “Mixed” Households, and Everyday Life | Chair: Natalia Aleksiun

• Susanne Korbel (Center for Jewish Studies, Graz): Intermarriage and Everyday Conviviality: Jewish/non-Jewish Households in Interwar and Wartime Budapest
• Maria von der Heydt (Berlin): Housing, Eating, Working, and Surviving. “Mixed Families” in Germany, 1938-1945

10:45 Panel 5: Family Dependency and Survival | Chair: Nina Valbousquet

• Maximilian Strnad (Kulturreferat, City of Munich): Anchored Against the Current: Transformations of Action Spaces within “Mixed Families” in Nazi Germany
• Michaela Raggam-Blesch (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich): A Shield Rescindable as a Feather – Mutual Dependencies within “Mixed Families” in Vienna
• Susanna Schrafstetter (University of Vermont): A Place More Dangerous than Nazi Germany? German “Mixed-Marriage” Families in Fascist Italy, 1938-1945
• Mirjam Neuhoff (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich): ”Mixed Families” in German Occupied Italy 1943-1945

13:45 Panel 6. Family Relations, Intimacy, and Emotions | Chair: Andrea Löw

• Joanna Bakón (University of Warsaw): Intimacy without Protection: “Mixed Families” in Occupied Poland and the Limits of Nazi Racial Categorization
• Laurien Vastenhout (NIOD, Amsterdam): “Mixed Families” and the Reconfiguration of Kinship in the Netherlands
• Tatjana Lichtenstein (University of Texas, Austin): Our entire Jewish family was exterminated: Intermarried Families, Victimhood, and Suffering in the Holocaust
• Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida): We lived well together. Polish Jewish survivors and their rescuers in the aftermath of the Holocaust

16:15 Panel 7: Children and Elderly | Chair: Maximilian Strnad

• Joanna B. Michlic (University College London): Carrying the Dark and Painful Secrets: Wartime Childhood, Fragile Survival, Stigma, and Memory in Polish-Jewish “Mixed Families”
• Radana Rutová (Terezín Memorial): Experiencing Belonging and Difference: Children from “Mixed Marriages” in the Terezin Ghetto
• Elisabeth Antony (USHMM, Washington): The Postwar Experience of Elderly Intermarried Viennese Jews

19:30 Keynote by Doris Bergen (University of Toronto): In and Out of View: Locating Mixed Couples in Histories of War and Genocide (NS-Doku, Munich)

19.06.2026

09:30 Panel 8: Agency, Resistance, and Survival | Chair: Stefan Ionescu

• Galyna Kutsovska (Uppsala University, Sweden): Negotiating Vulnerability and Agency: Survival Strategies of Intermarried Families During the Holocaust in Kharkiv
• Laura Hobson Faure (Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris): Renée de Monbrison (née Cahen d’Anvers) and Hubert Conquéré de Monbrison during the Holocaust in France: Saving the Rescuers?
• Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini (Danish National Archives, Copenhagen): To stay or to go… The experience of “mixed couples” and their children in relation to the “Judenaktion” in Denmark

11:15 Panel 9: Religious Institutions and Dynamics of Agency and Belonging | Chair: Ferenc Laczó

• Benjamin Frommer (Northwestern University, Chicago): Permission to Wed: Intermarriage with Jews in the Slovak State
• Nina Valbousquet (CNRS, Paris): Jewish-Catholic Couples in Italy Between Fascist Persecution and Vatican Intermediation (1938-1945)
• Stefan Ionescu (Chapman University, California): Claiming “Deserving” Status as Resistance to the Holocaust: “Mixed Families,” Converted Jews and Their Offsprings during the Aryanization of Jewish Property in World War II Romania

14:00-15:30 Concluding panel

• Elisabeth Anthony (USHMM, Washington)
• Doris Bergen (University of Toronto)
• Michael Brenner (American University, Washington / LMU Munich)
• Andrea Löw (Institute for Contemporary History, Munich)

Kontakt: kezeric@ifz-muenchen.de

Source: HSozKult (Web)