CES: Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz

Date: 

Monday, April 30, 2018, 4:15pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Adolphus Busch Hall, Lower Level Conference Room, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA

 

Bartov PhotoOmer Bartov
John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Department of History, Brown University

 

This lecture will discuss how the East Galician town of Buczacz was transformed from a site of coexistence, where Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews had lived side-by-side for centuries, into a site of genocide. Between 1941, when the Germans conquered the region, and 1944, when the Soviets liberated it, the entire Jewish population of Buczacz was murdered by the Nazis, with ample help from local Ukrainians, who then also ethnically cleansed the region of the Polish population. What were the reasons for this instance of communal violence, what were its dynamics, and why has it been erased from the local memory?

 

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