Holocaust talk exposes German Army’s complicit role in WWII mass murders

“…the Holocaust started in Eastern Europe with civilians being shot into pits in their thousands, not just by the SS, but by members of the German military...”

• Thursday 30 January, 6.30pm, at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre with speaker and Holocaust expert Dr Waitman Beorn

A LEADING authority on the Holocaust will share his exposé of the German Army’s chilling role in ‘The Final Solution’ when he visits the University this month.

Dr Waitman Beorn’s forensic research into how the Wehrmacht enabled genocide during the Nazi regime uncovered horrific crimes more often associated with the SS, including mass executions, forced labour, rape and graverobbing, by ordinary foot soldiers.  Those who refused to participate were only lightly punished with name-calling, if at all, debunking the widely-held idea they were conscripted to commit murder.

“I’m interested in telling stories and presenting history as it happened to individuals, because it’s not just some vague notion.  When we say the German Army was complicit, that means people were making choices to do things,” said Dr Beorn, an Iraq combat veteran and Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University.

“You still see today people who want to think of the German Army as a heroic organisation and have an odd affinity for it.  I certainly take every opportunity to push back on that,” said the historian of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The lecture, at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre, is one of two events to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp.

“I’m really pleased that Dr Beorn is coming here because his work is in an area that is not well known in general by the public,” said the Centre’s Director, Emma King.

“People are familiar with Auschwitz, they’re familiar with the idea of concentration camps, people know about gas chambers.  Fewer people know that the Holocaust started in Eastern Europe with civilians being shot into pits in their thousands not just by the SS, but by members of the German military,” she added.

The guest lecture marks a new partnership between the University of Huddersfield, the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association, which runs the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre for the North, the Wiener Holocaust Library, which is the world’s oldest Holocaust archive, and the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, the leading academic centre of its kind in Europe.

Together, the four organisations, under the banner of the Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership, will support and promote cutting-edge research into the Holocaust and other genocides to a wider audience.

Dr Beorn’s lecture, Killing the ‘Clean’ Wehrmacht: The Reality of the German Army and the Holocaust, draws on his first book, Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus (Harvard University Press), which was awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize, among other accolades.  He is currently working on a book project on the understudied Janowska concentration camp in Lviv, Ukraine.

• The guest lecture is at 6.30pm on Thursday 30 January.  Tickets, priced £6 (£4 for concessions) are available online or can be reserved by calling 01484 471939.
• Dr Waitman Beorn is a Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University and a consultant and writer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  He was formerly Director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum and has written for many specialist publications including The Washington Post and Forward – an American Jewish news website.  Photos courtesy of Dr Beorn.