On the Holocaust - Yad Vashem

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The Perpetrators of the Holocaust - Consequences at a Distance (Redux) [On the Holocaust] Apr 27, 2022

Show notes

Today marks Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) 2022. In keeping with Yad Vashem's annual theme, "Transports to Extinction: The Deportation of the Jews during the Holocaust," we're presenting the following episode, that originally aired in February 2021.
The Holocaust could not have been carried out by the executioners alone. Such large-scale murder, over vast distances, required a massive apparatus staffed by hundreds of thousands of state administrative and security personnel. How could so many seemingly “ordinary” people knowingly take part in such crimes? In this episode we take a glimpse at this troubling phenomenon, starting with a single German police officer, Paul Salitter, tasked with escorting a train of 1,007 Jews from Germany to a ghetto in occupied Latvia.
Featured guest - Dr. Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“The Scattered Life I Lead” - The Diary of Lucien Dreyfus: a Yad Vashem Podcast [On the Holocaust] Apr 18, 2022

Show notes

Holocaust-era diary writing offers a rare glimpse into real-time events and personal reflections that, had they not been written, may well have been swept away in the rapid unfolding of events. The diary of a French Jewish intellectual, Lucien Dreyfus, helps us shed light on one person’s grappling with the calamity. In this episode of "On the Holocaust", we'll talk about Dreyfus's life, reflections and fate during the Holocaust as expressed in his wartime diary: “’A Terrible and Terribly Interesting Epoch’: The Holocaust Diary of Lucien Dreyfus.” .
Featured guest: Alexandra Garbarini, Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Williams College in Massachusetts.

Inside The Wannsee Conference: a Yad Vashem Podcast [On the Holocaust] Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

In early 1942, several high-ranking Nazi officials convened in a lavish villa outside Berlin for what would later be known as the Wannsee Conference. For years after the war, conventional wisdom was that in this infamous conference the Final Solution was decided upon. Today we know that mass murder of Jews began well before the conference. Given this, what makes the Wannsee conference such an important landmark in the history of the Holocaust? Today on "On the Holocaust" we'll talk about the decisions at the conference, about the “desk murderers” and about one crucial document that was uncovered by chance.
Featured guest: Christoph Kreutzmueller, curator at the Jewish Museum Berlin. Co-editor of The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee Conference.

The Kindertransport: Strangers in a Strange Land [On the Holocaust] Feb 15, 2022

Show notes

Just before the outbreak of World War II, about 10,000 Jewish children were given a rare chance to escape from mainland Europe. They were sent to Britain as part of a refugee program later known as the Kindertransport. In this episode of "On The Holocaust" we focus on the events leading up to this extraordinary aid effort, the complex fates of these children, and the dilemmas of their parents.
Featured guest: Jennifer Craig-Norton, visiting fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK.

The Eichmann Trial [On the Holocaust] Jan 24, 2022

Show notes

On April 10, 1961, at 8:55 a.m. Adolf Eichmann, who during the Holocaust period had orchestrated the deportations of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps, was seated in a glass booth in the Beit Ha'am hall in Jerusalem. The hall was packed full. People in Israel and around the world clung to the radios and listened intently to the one hundred and ten witnesses who came up one after the other and told, in the first person singular, of the horrors of the Holocaust. It was the first time the stories of the survivors took center stage and the first time the public in Israel truly stopped and listened. As a result of the trial, a different discourse developed on the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust and the place of the survivors in Israeli society.
This episode will delve into this watershed event, by focusing on the testimonies of Moshe Bejsky, a survivor of the Plaszow camp, and Rivka Yoselevska, who alone survived the shooting pits, alongside the reactions and impressions of Israeli reporters and intellectuals who witnessed the trial.

Crossing the Boundary - The Righteous Among the Nations [On the Holocaust] Jul 11, 2021

Show notes

In a morally bankrupt world, at a time when the attitude of the majority of the local population towards Jews was tainted by apathy or outright hostility, there was also a small minority of people who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold their moral values. People who were willing to leave their place among the bystanders and in many ways share the fates of the Jewish victims.
In this episode of "On The Holocaust" we discuss several of these exceptional stories, some controversial cases, and the driving forces that led to the establishment of Yad Vashem’s Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations.
The episode is accompanied by Dr. Joel Zisenwine - historian and Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem.

The First Female Rabbi [On the Holocaust] May 13, 2021

Show notes

For years, the story of Regina Jonas was lost to the world. Then, in the 90s, scholars began to discover this woman of extraordinary talent and ambition. In this episode of "On The Holocaust" we focus on the fate of the Jewish community in Germany through the remarkable story of Regina Jonas, the first female rabbi, whose life was taken in Auschwitz, but whose place in Jewish history is no longer forgotten.
Featured guest: Guy Miron, Professor of History and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Open University of Israel

[On the Holocaust] What Happened at Babi Yar Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

On September 28, 1941, a German edict was issued ordering the Jews of Kiev and of the surrounding area to gather some clothes and belongings, and report at an intersection not far from a local freight train station. Instead of being deported, however, they were marched to Babi Yar and shot over the course of two days. According to a contemporary report, the German forces on hand murdered 33,771 Jews. Dina Pronicheva is one of the very few to survive this horrific event. This is her story.
Featured guest: Karel Berkhoff, Senior Researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

[On the Holocaust] The Vilna Ghetto “Paper Brigade” Apr 01, 2021

Show notes

Shmerke Kaczerginski was a boisterous, radical young writer and musician who led an exciting circle of young artists who called themselves "Young Vilna." His best friend, Abraham Sutzkever, would go on to become one of the greatest Yiddish poets of his generation. As the two entered adulthood, their artistic careers were interrupted by the Nazi invasion of their hometown of Vilna. They didn't expect that being thrown in a ghetto would lead to one of the most important works of their entire lives - the “Paper Brigade.”

[On the Holocaust] Man on the Inside, Pt. 2 Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

Kurt Gerstein defies easy categorization. The Germans didn't know what to think of him, the French changed their minds. His friends and family paint a picture of a man torn between two worlds. Facts about his life seem to clash with one another. Even decades after World War II ended, people still couldn't figure out whether he had participated in, or sabotaged, the German murder machinery.
Featured guest: Dr. Valerie Hébert, Associate Professor of History, Lakehead University, Canada.
Valerie Hébert is an associate professor of history and interdisciplinary studies at Lakehead University Orillia. She teaches European history, specializing in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the photography of human rights violations and international conflict. She has published on the German resistance figure Kurt Gerstein, as well as on the Nuremberg Trials, Rwanda’s Gacaca Tribunals, the evolution of human rights law, and Holocaust photography

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