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For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz鈥攖oday part of Ukraine鈥攚as home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In his talk,听Omer Bartov will explain how ethnic cleansing doesn鈥檛 occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren鈥檛 just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood.
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Omer Bartov听is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. He is the author of听Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, along with several other well-respected scholarly works on the Holocaust and genocide, including听Germany鈥檚 War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. He has written for听The New Republic,听The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and听The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.听
For more information, please E-Mail:听jsp-info@sas.upenn.edu听or Call:听215-898-6654
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The听32nd听Annual听Joseph听Alexander听Colloquium is sponsored听by听the听Joseph听Alexander听Foundation听and听the听Mackler听Family.听