Editorial Introduction
-
Andrea Peto
Why do we need a new academic journal on the history of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe? When I received the offer from the most innovative centre for Holocaust remembrance, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC) in Kyiv, I did not hesitate. I was familiar with the pioneering work of this collective of professionals who started innovative documentation, research, and memory policy interventions amidst extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Our plan together with Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Maksym Rabinovych, Oleh Shovenko and later with Oleksiy Makukhin was to establish the first and so far, the only international peer reviewed academic journal registered in Ukraine to start a professional dialogue about major issues of researching the Holocaust. I am grateful to our publisher, DeGruyter, namely Marcia Schwartz, Florian Hoppe, and Bendix Düker, who supported this new journal from the start and recognised its strategic and political importance well before Russia started the war on Ukraine. When we planned the journal, we knew that it will be important, as the distortion of historical research – just like how Russia justifies its war against Ukraine – has a long history.
The starting point of our common work was the decision that the journal should accept articles in Ukrainian to give visibility to the research in Ukraine. Addressing the inequality in scientific knowledge production was one of the aims of the journal in order to go beyond the current practice of expecting Eastern European researchers to have the resources in their poorly paid academic jobs to conduct research and to be also able to submit their research for peer review in an appropriate foreign language without a word of complaint. Researchers were encouraged to approach the journal with innovative topics.
To facilitate this novel approach of knowledge production and presentation of research, not only did we need the support of the founder and the publisher but, more importantly, also an innovative editorial structure with a unique contribution from the Editorial Board and the Advisory Board. Each accepted article is curated by a member of the Editorial Board, making sure that it receives the most helpful feedback from the peer review process.
The sections in the journal are also following the original plan to create a bridge between academic and public discussion. Research articles are published either as single articles or as parts of thematic blocks called “Dossiers,” which present topical issues based on the research of several authors with the help of a guest editor. The guest editor of this issue is Helena Duffy who commissioned articles about the literary presentations of the Holocaust in Ukraine.
The development of an international professional dialogue has become the first aspect of the journal’s design, which is why it includes an Open Forum, in which invited researchers give their views on controversial issues in the field. This issue’s Open Forum is edited by Tobias Wals. In collaboration with other institutions, EEHS uses Zoom to organise discussions, the edited texts of which are published. In this issue, scholars are interrogating the concept “Never again!” This is an attempt to bring the results of the academic work closer to the public. Therefore, we also include interviews with personalities who not only excel in their profession, but also want to make an impact outside their profession. In the first issue, Alexandra M. Szabó interviews Karen Jungblut, one of the founders of the Shoah Visual History Archive in Los Angeles.
The book review section, edited by Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, Katarzyna Liszka and Petro Dolhanov, gives an overview not only of books published in English, but it also contributes to a broader professional discussion.
It is also the political aim of the journal to make sources which are relevant to the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine available to a wider audience to use in research and for teaching. The Source Section is edited by Andrea Löw, Synne Corell, and Marta Havryshko. The first source presented in EEHS was proposed by Yurii Kaparulin: a diary about Nazi-occupied Kherson. When we selected it for translation and publication we could not foresee how tragically relevant this source would be after the occupation by the Russian forces.
Thanks to the Editorial Board for their work and to the Scientific Advisory Board for their support and advice, and that in the past year, an intellectual and political collective was born based on trust and shared values. I am honoured to work together with this team, including the very valuable work of the editorial assistant, Borbála Klacsmann, and the proof-reader, Mariann Köves. The journal’s social media accounts were run by Yana Ustymenko first and are run by Yaryna Martyniuk from BYHMC now.
© 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Open Forum, edited by Tobias Wals, Andrea Petö
- Introduction
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust?
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust? On a Universal Narrative of the Holocaust and Remembering the Past in Ukraine
- Is Digitalization a Blessing or a Curse for Holocaust Memorialization?
- Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity? Beyond the Refrain of “Do not Divide the Dead”: Othering the Jews as a Technology of Power in the Soviet Union
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity?
- Perspectives
- A Holocaust Researcher and the War
- Open Forum
- Russian War, Neocolonialism and Holocaust Studies in Ukraine
- Roundtable
- “Never Again!” Roundtable Organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre
- Interview
- Interview with Karen Jungblut
- Dossier: The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representation, edited by Helena Duffy
- The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representations
- Rachel Seiffert’s A Boy in Winter (2017) and the Literary Construction of Ukraine
- Ukrainians in French Holocaust Literature: Piotr Rawicz’s Blood from the Sky and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
- On the Journey Through Ukraine: Representations of the Holocaust in Friedrich Gorenstein’s Traveling Companions
- Is It Right to Talk About the Holocaust in Ukraine Now? An Interview with Jonathan Littell, the Author of The Kindly Ones
- Research Articles
- Unwelcome Return Home: Jews, Anti-Semitism and the Housing Problem in Post-War Kyiv
- Forced Labor Camps for Jews in Reichskommissariat Ukraine: The Exploitation of Jewish Labor within the Holocaust in the East
- More than Meets the Eye – The Intricate Relationship between Selfies at Holocaust Memorial Sites and Their Subsequent Shaming
- Sources, edited by Andrea Löw, Marta Havryshko
- Eyewitness Account of the Nazi Occupation in the South of Ukraine: Diary of a Kherson Resident
- Historiography, edited by Jan Lanicek
- Overview of the Recent Historiography
- Post-Holocaust Transitional Justice in Hungary – Approaches, Disputes, and Debates
- Romania: Historiography on Holocaust and Postwar Justice Studies
- Transitional Justice and the Holocaust in Poland
- Reviews, edited by Elenore Lappin-Eppel, Katarzyna Liszka
- Through the Distorted Mirror. Natalia Romik’s “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival”
- Sliwa, Joanna. 2021. Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 218 pp. ISBN 978-1-978822-94-8
- Albert Venger, ed. Stalindorfs’kyi Raion: Dokumenty i Materialy, Kyiv: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charity, 2021, 340 p.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Open Forum, edited by Tobias Wals, Andrea Petö
- Introduction
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust?
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust? On a Universal Narrative of the Holocaust and Remembering the Past in Ukraine
- Is Digitalization a Blessing or a Curse for Holocaust Memorialization?
- Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity? Beyond the Refrain of “Do not Divide the Dead”: Othering the Jews as a Technology of Power in the Soviet Union
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity?
- Perspectives
- A Holocaust Researcher and the War
- Open Forum
- Russian War, Neocolonialism and Holocaust Studies in Ukraine
- Roundtable
- “Never Again!” Roundtable Organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre
- Interview
- Interview with Karen Jungblut
- Dossier: The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representation, edited by Helena Duffy
- The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representations
- Rachel Seiffert’s A Boy in Winter (2017) and the Literary Construction of Ukraine
- Ukrainians in French Holocaust Literature: Piotr Rawicz’s Blood from the Sky and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
- On the Journey Through Ukraine: Representations of the Holocaust in Friedrich Gorenstein’s Traveling Companions
- Is It Right to Talk About the Holocaust in Ukraine Now? An Interview with Jonathan Littell, the Author of The Kindly Ones
- Research Articles
- Unwelcome Return Home: Jews, Anti-Semitism and the Housing Problem in Post-War Kyiv
- Forced Labor Camps for Jews in Reichskommissariat Ukraine: The Exploitation of Jewish Labor within the Holocaust in the East
- More than Meets the Eye – The Intricate Relationship between Selfies at Holocaust Memorial Sites and Their Subsequent Shaming
- Sources, edited by Andrea Löw, Marta Havryshko
- Eyewitness Account of the Nazi Occupation in the South of Ukraine: Diary of a Kherson Resident
- Historiography, edited by Jan Lanicek
- Overview of the Recent Historiography
- Post-Holocaust Transitional Justice in Hungary – Approaches, Disputes, and Debates
- Romania: Historiography on Holocaust and Postwar Justice Studies
- Transitional Justice and the Holocaust in Poland
- Reviews, edited by Elenore Lappin-Eppel, Katarzyna Liszka
- Through the Distorted Mirror. Natalia Romik’s “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival”
- Sliwa, Joanna. 2021. Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 218 pp. ISBN 978-1-978822-94-8
- Albert Venger, ed. Stalindorfs’kyi Raion: Dokumenty i Materialy, Kyiv: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charity, 2021, 340 p.
