Wannsee. Looking at the International Dimension of the Holocaust.

Diese Folge ist auf Deutsch/ THIS EPISODE IS IN GERMAN. English Wrap-UP below. Die Ausstellung "Vicious Circle" zeigt fünf historische Pogrome gegen jüdische Gemeinschaften in Berlin, Bagdad, Kielce und Aden sowie den Angriff der Hamas auf Kibbuzim im Gaza-Gürtel am 7. Oktober 2023. Sie soll die Kontinuität antisemitischer Gewalt aufzeigen. Nachdem die Ausstellung nicht an der Freien Universität Berlin gezeigt werden konnte, zeigen wir sie im März 2025 am Wannsee. Mit der Kuratorin Maiken Umbach und unserer Direktorin Deborah Hartmann sprechen wir über die Ausstellung und warum sie gerade jetzt gezeigt wird.  Die Ausstellung ist vom 7. März bis 3. April, jeweils dienstags bis sonntags, 11.00 bis 17.00 Uhr geöffnet. Sie ist einsprachig Englisch.

In our special edition we talk to curator Maiken Umbach about the exhibition "The Vicious Circle". It shows five historical pogroms against Jewish communities in Berlin, Baghdad, Kielce, and Aden, as well as the Hamas attack on kibbutzim in the Gaza Belt on October 7, 2023. It demonstrates the continuity of anti-Semitic violence. Since the exhibition could not be shown at Freie Universität Berlin, we decided to show it at Wannsee.  You find an extended German version on the channel.  The exhibition is in English and open from March 7 to April 3, Tuesdays to Sundays, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.

After World War I, Hungary plunged into political chaos. When the former commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian navy, Miklós Horthy, crushed a short-lived communist regime in 1920, his troops targeted not only political opponents but also the Jewish population of Budapest. In the years that followed, however, anti-Semitism was never as violent as in Germany. In 1939, Hungary, eager to regain territory lost after 1918, joined a formal alliance with Germany and participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Nevertheless, most of Hungary's Jews escaped the mass murder that took place in the surrounding countries until 1944. In March of that year, the Germans occupied the country and immediately began deporting Hungarian Jews. In just eight weeks, over 400,000 Jews were deported, most of whom were murdered upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. We spoke with Adam Kerpel-Fronius who works at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin about this final phase of the Holocaust.

In 1941 Bulgaria entered an alliance with Germany and participated in the occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia. Its government cooperated in the deportation of Jews from the occupied territories and also agreed to deport Jews from the Bulgarian mainland, a step that was however not carried out due to a variety of reasons. We talk about the complex history of Bulgaria during the holocaust with historian Souzana Hazan. 

Before the Second World War, the largest Jewish community in Greece and in the Balkans lived in Thessaloniki. In 1900 they made up half of the city's population. During the Nazi occupation, the German persecution of the Jewish community was astonishingly swift and brutal. In this episode we speak with historian Maria Vassilikou about the case of Thessaloniki, the authoritarian regime under Ioannis Metaxas that dealt with anti-Semitism differently than others, and how the public discourse about the Holocaust was shaped after the war. 

Turkey remained neutral during the war. But the Nazis also planned to murder Turkey's Jews, as the list on page six of the Wannsee Protocol shows. We speak with Corry Guttstadt about Turkey's Jews, the country's role for Jewish refugees, and how the history of the Holocaust was dealt with after the war.

France was one of the victors of World War I and a safe haven for many political and Jewish refugees in the 1930s. The Germans attacked and defeated the French in 1940. Anti-Semitism became a core element not only of German policy and propaganda, but also of the collaborationist government under Marshal Pétain. We talk with historian Renée Poznanski about how the anti-Semitic idea of a "Jewish question" influenced how Jews were persecuted in France and how the country remembered the occupation after the war.

"The Holocaust was not a metaphor…as historians we must be aware of metaphors, and we must explain exactly the horrific things that happened during the Holocaust." (Havi Dreifuss) - 81 years ago, on April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began. In our second episode on Poland, we spoke with historian Havi Dreifuss about the Jewish experience of the Holocaust in Poland and her last book "Ghetto Warsaw. The End". In her research, she uses diaries, letters, and other contemporary documents – letting Jews themselves describe the horrific reality of the ghetto. We talked about Jewish-Polish relations, the origins of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, and how to write about the Holocaust when most of the survivors are no longer with us. 

Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe before the war. Most of the more than 3 million Jews living in Poland were murdered in the Holocaust. In our first episode on Poland, we talk with historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe about the role played by Polish mayors in the German-occupied General Government during the Holocaust. As part of the occupation, the Germans dismantled the Polish central state. On the local level, however, Polish officials were often allowed to remain in office. It was primarily the mayors who represented the population’s interests to the occupying power.

We speak with the archivist and historian Dorien Styven – our colleague from the Belgian Holocaust Memorial "Kazerne Dossin" – about the Committee for the Defense of the Jews (CDJ). This organization's main goal was to save as many Jews as possible from being murdered by the Nazis. Founded by young communists, the Committee brought together very different Jewish groups. It succeeded in creating a vast network that helped about 3,000 children hide in private families and child care institutions. Partisans close to the Committee also carried out the only known attack on a deportation train to have taken place during the Holocaust.