Research
The Leverhulme Trust supported research project, '"The Answer to Auschwitz"? investigates how the Holocaust (Judeocide) was incorporated into the GDR's antifascist memory culture. It seeks to deliver a heterodox re-visiting of this controversial topic. Since the 1990s, influential accounts such as Jeffrey Herf's "Divided Memory" established a narrative of exclusion and downplaying of the Holocaust in favour of a self-serving lionisation of Communist resistance and victimhood. In-depth archival investigations alongside a close reading of the GDR's material and immaterial cultural pantheon demonstrate that this seemingly established fact of history is far from clear. The research contributes to burning questions of contemporary international significance ranging from ideology in the post-1990 German state, responsibility for the rise of right wing extremism (the AfD), antisemitism and anti-Zionism to the unceasing process of coming to terms with the Holocaust.
Research grants
‘The Answer to Auschwitz’? Holocaust Memory and Antifascism in the Other Germany
LEVERHULME TRUST (UK)
October 2022 - September 2025