Mittwoch, 10. Dezember 2025, 13:00 - 18:00

Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Rabensteig 3, 1010 Vienna

VWI invites RECET

13:00-13:40

Jovana Cvetićanin (VWI Junior Fellow/Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies)
Yugoslavia and the Shoah 1944-1991

This project explores the evolution of the narrative and memory of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia through the testimonies of Yugoslav Holocaust survivors and the Yugoslav press and investigates the entire case of Yugoslavia at the Eichmann trial. Fully focused on the background of the different fates of Jews in different parts of occupied and partitioned Yugoslavia the study investigates the initial formation and construction of narrative and memories of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, the emergence of survivor stories and media representations in the immediate postwar era, and the process of change that took place over nearly five decades. Based heavily on uninvestigated archival records, unpublished and unexplored personal accounts of Yugoslav Holocaust survivors, and newspaper articles, the study brings to light two crucial but unexplored aspects of the Holocaust memory and narrative in Yugoslavia, providing a profound understanding of the formation of the Holocaust awareness in Yugoslavia. Moreover, by revealing the full case of Yugoslavia presented at the highly publicized Eichmann trial, including the complete narrative the trial generated regarding the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, the study will help to entirely comprehend the role played by Yugoslav state at the trial, and it will provide a more thorough understanding of the official Yugoslav attitude toward the Holocaust and genocide.

Jovana Cvetićanin, PhD candidate at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, holds a BA in Law, Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, and an MA in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa, The Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies, School of History. She is author of the monograph Yugoslavia and the Eichmann Trial, recipient of Yad Vashem Award for 2019, 2023 Israel Gutman z”l Prize for Holocaust Research, 2025 The Raab Center Prize, and Claims Conference Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies.

Commented by Ljiljana Radonić (Institute of Culture Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Ljiljana Radonić is the vice-director of the Institute of Culture Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and from 2019-2024 headed an ERC project on “Globalized Memorial Museums” there. She wrote her habilitation on the “World War II in Post-Communist Memorial Museums” (Berlin: De Gruyter 2021) at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna where she also has been teaching since 2004, for example on (South) East European Memory Politics Transformations after 1989. Her PhD dealt with the “War on Memory. Croatian Memory Politics between Revisionism and European Standards” (Frankfurt: Campus 2010). She is a member of the Austrian Delegation to the IHRA, of the Committee of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for the Victims of National Socialism, the Austrian National Forum against Antisemitism and the advisory boards for the Museum of Military History (HGM) in Vienna, OeAD ERINNERN:AT and the Fritz Bauer Institute.

13:40-14:20

Jackie Olson (VWI Junior Fellow)
The Politics of Death in Post-war Austria, 1945-1970

This project delves into the politics of burial in postwar Austria, particularly rural eastern Austria, from 1945-1970. The study investigates how local Austrians, visitors such as Jewish expats, government officials and religious organizations such as the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG) interacted with the burial spaces of Jewish victims, forced laborers from eastern Europe, and Soviet POWs who died during internment. It highlights how these individuals participated in the mourning process, and how their relationships to the graves influenced early Austrian postwar memory, particularly in the context of the Soviet occupation. This study looks at what death meant to various generational, national, and confessional identities given the backdrop of a volatile postwar Europe. Most importantly, the project is crucial for better understanding the immediate aftermath of the war, arguing that the graves provide a window into the personal experience of mourning and coming to terms with loss, not in a moment of national triumph, but in a time of defeat and shame. Rather than focus on occupied governments and large-scale geopolitical developments, graves make the postwar story local, highlighting small-scale rural historical actors.

Jackie Olson is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Stanford University. Her research is on postwar memory and the cultural implications of changing burial practices in Germany and Austria. Jackie received her B.A. in History and German from Vanderbilt University and lived in Vienna teaching English on an Austrian Fulbright Grant. Jackie has taught on the history of the dead in modern Europe and was awarded prestigious fellowships, including the Summer Graduate Research Fellowship at the USHMM Mandel Center. Currently, she is a research assistant for a spatial narratives project using Holocaust testimonies funded by the National Science Foundation.

Commented by Ursula Mindler-Steiner (Department of History, University of Graz)
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Ursula K. Mindler-Steiner is a historian and Associate Professor at the Department of History at Graz University. She is also a lecturer at the Chair of Cultural Studies at Andrássy University Budapest. Her research focuses on Nationals Socialism and the Shoa, the history of minorities (esp. Jewish and Romani population), the Austrian-Hungarian border region, biographies and identities, and memory culture. She has authored and edited various books (e.g. on the Jewish community of Oberwart/Felsőőr) and published numerous articles.

14:20-15:00

Elena Beletckaia (VWI Junior Fellow)
The Notion of Home in the Holocaust Discourse. Post-war Migration in/to Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United States

This research explores the concept of home and its sentimental value in Holocaust survivors' narratives through a comparative analysis of audiovisual testimonies. Focusing on survivors who migrated to North America, Israel, or returned to Eastern Europe during the post-war period (1945-1949), this study employs a mixed-methods approach that integrates thematic, narrative, phenomenological, and multimodal analyses. The research examines how survivors articulate their experiences of home, displacement, and identity reconstruction. The study incorporates Noah Shenker’s methodological framework to analyze how the recording environment influences memory sharing, highlighting the emotional depth of Holocaust survivors' recollections. Additionally, the research applies assimilation and historical trauma theories to explore the lasting emotional and intergenerational impacts of the Holocaust on perceptions of home and identity.

Elena Beletckaia is a PhD candidate at Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies (HfJS) in Germany, specializing in Jewish literature and Holocaust studies. Her doctoral research focuses on Holocaust testimonies and explores the sentimental value of home within Holocaust discourse, particularly concerning post-war migration to Eastern Europe, Israel, and the United States. She has participated in recognized educational programs organized by Jewish institutions, including Paideia, Yad Vashem International Holocaust School, USHMM, and the International Network of Genocide Scholars. Additionally, she is an active member of the H-Judaic network, contributing as an editor.

Commented by Alexander Schneidmesser (RECET, University of Vienna)
Alexander Schneidmesser studied Eastern European Cultural Studies at the University of Potsdam and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2016 to 2022, he worked at the International Institute for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. He is pursuing a PhD at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET), University of Vienna, where his research focuses on the mutual perceptions between post-Soviet Germans and post-Soviet Jews in Germany. Currently, he is a project manager for the Claims Conference, specializing in Holocaust education.

15:30-16:10

Bogdan Chiriac (Gerda Henkel Research Fellow)
Petitioning Against Injustice. Roma Resistance in Transnistria During the Holocaust

This research project explores the various types of petitions submitted by Roma deportees in response to state-sponsored violence and persecution in Romania between 1942 and 1944. In doing so, it aims to bring into focus the agency of ordinary Roma men and women by moving away from the traditional historical narrative, which relegated them to the role of passive victims of persecution, and their petitions to brave, yet futile attempts to sway the same authoritarian Antonescu regime that initiated their deportation in 1942. Instead, Roma petitioners are considered as active agents subjected to persecution, but not completely disenfranchised, who used these entreaties to seek some form of assistance or recourse, as well as to protest against what they perceived as acts of injustice. Drawing on archival sources and testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this project will situate these entreaties within the larger concept of wartime petition writing and reassess their value as a medium used by persecuted minority groups to express their grievances and denounce abuses, in full awareness of the risks entailed in challenging state policies in non-democratic regimes during World War II.

Bogdan Chiriac is an independent researcher from Romania working in the field of modern and contemporary Romanian history. He received his B.A. in History (2005) from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iași. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Central European University in Budapest, where he obtained his MA in Nationalism Studies (2008) and his PhD in Comparative History (2017). He has been involved in several research projects focusing on Holocaust studies, the trials of major war criminals in postwar Romania, and the history of Roma in Romania.

Commented by Laura Plochberger (RECET, University of Vienna)
Laura Plochberger is a PhD researcher in the doc.funds project “The Dynamics of Change and Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures” at RECET. Her research revolves around the impact of workers’ organizing in the wood-producing businesses of Bucovina in the last phase of the Austrian-Hungarian empire into greater Romania. She previously received the 1000 Jahre Niederösterreich Stipend issued by the State of Lower Austria as well as the Arbeiterkammer Oberösterreich Science Award 2023.

16:10-16:50

Béla Bodó (VWI Senior Fellow)
Edmund Veesenmayer in Budapest: the Final Phase of the Jewish Genocide

This project researches the private life and political career of Edmund Veesenmayer, who served as Hitler’s personal representative and Reich Plenipotentiary in Hungary between March and December of 1944. As Nazi Germany’s chief diplomat, Veesenmayer helped to prevent Hungary from leaving the Axis alliance in the final phase of the war. He deposed the conservative Kállay government, appointed ministers, orchestrated the arrest of political opponents, and hastened the transformation of the Hungarian economy to serve German needs. Veesenmayer played a major role in the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the Third Reich and Nazi-occupied Europe in the spring and early summer of 1944. More than two thirds of the more than 450,000 deportees perished in the labor and death camps. The project will shed light on Veesenmayer’s accomplishment as an economist and academic, his problem-solving skills as a diplomat, and his successes and failures as one of the architects of the genocide. Finally, the project will examine Veesenmayer’s role as a witness at the trial of Endre-Baky-Jaross in Hungary in 1946, his behavior during his own trial at Nuremberg in 1948/49, and his private life as a successful businessman in Germany after his release from prison in 1951.

Béla Bodó received his PhD from York University in Canada in 1998. He is a professor of history at the University of Bonn in Germany. His latest book, entitled Black Humor and the White Terror was published by Routledge in 2023.

Commented by Kinga Frojimovics (VWI)
Kinga Frojimovics, PhD, is a historian and archivist, senior archivist at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). Her research focuses on the history of the Holocaust in Hungary, Jewish religious life in Hungary, and the cataloguing of Jewish and Holocaust-related archival collections. She has authored six monographs, edited eight volumes, and published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.

16:50-17:30

Roman Shlyakhtych (VWI Fortunoff Research Fellow)
Involvement of Local Policemen in the Implementation of the Holocaust Policy on the Territory of the Reichskommissariat ‘Ukraine’

The study of local police involvement in the Holocaust has long been neglected by Ukrainian historians. It was believed that crimes in the occupied territories were committed only by the Nazis. These crimes were indeed initiated by the Nazis, but their scale would have been much smaller without the participation of local perpetrators. This project involves the study of local police involvement in the Holocaust. The main focus will be on the study of the social history of the Holocaust. That is, to recherche the strategies of behavior of local residents, members of the auxiliary police and local authorities during the years of the Holocaust. Reconstruct various options for police involvement in discrimination, exploitation and extermination of Jews. Using the methods of sociology and psychology, I plan to outline the motives of policemen's participation in the Holocaust. To reveal the role of local auxiliary police agents in the Holocaust. How various units of the auxiliary police were involved in the violence against the Jews?. For this purpose, I aim to involve the testimony of eyewitnesses and people who survived during the Holocaust. Therefore, video evidence from the Fortunoff Archive collection will be an important source of my research.

Roman Shliakhtych is a lecturer in the Department of Social-Humanitarian Science at the State University of Economy and Technology in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. During 2023-2025, he was a doctoral student at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University, and his dissertation is on the involvement of members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police in the implementation of Holocaust policy in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. He has been researching the participation of local policemen in the Holocaust on the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine since 2014. Roman is the author of two monographs, and he has published more than forty studies in professional publications. He has been a fellow at leading Holocaust research centres, such as Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yahad-In Unum, and, from 2023 to 2024, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Commented by Jannis Panagiotidis (RECET, University of Vienna)
Jannis Panagiotidis is Scientific Director of the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the history of anti-East European racism, on East-West migration during the Cold War, on post-Soviet migration, and on the history of free movement. He has also published on the global history of ethnic Germans from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

17:30-18:00 Farewell

Please register at Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein! by latest 9 December 2025, 12.00 am and bring your ID.

In cooperation with:

By participating in this event, you consent to the publication of photos, video and audio recordings that are made during the event.