Editorial Introduction
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Andrea Petö
Founder of Yahad-In Unum and head of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center’s Academic Council, Father Patrick Desbois’s statement, “good people sometimes don’t know how to stand together,” has never been more important than now. For this reason, I must begin by reiterating our statement made in the name of the EEHS (Eastern European Holocaust Studies) Editorial and Advisory Board: “EEHS is shocked by Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, including the shocking murder, abduction, and violation of civilians. We would like to express our sympathy and full solidarity with anyone who has been affected.” Clear words and clear distinctions between perpetrators and victims are as necessary as ever.
In these dark times shocking and shattering us all, solid academic research is more important than ever: understanding alone does not suffice for defeating the forces of destruction, but unless we understand the workings and machinery of those forces, we will never be able to defeat them. This is what we aspire to contribute to by providing space for cutting-edge academic research – a work that has been recognized internationally. The second issue of EEHS starts with an unexpected and valuable acknowledgment of our work as the journal of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The Center was awarded the 10th Dodd Prize, which had been previously awarded to President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Doctors Without Borders, among others. In his awarding speech, James Waller, a member of the Advisory Board of EEHS, pointed out how “the Center recognizes the need for public discourse around Babyn Yar and the role that this place of destruction plays in the social memory of Ukraine.”
This second issue of EEHS would also like to contribute to this discourse with a Dossier on Anatoly Kuznetsov edited by Leona Toker. In 1966, Kuznetsov published Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, which helped to make “Babi Yar” a generic name for what is now known as “the Holocaust by bullets,” a term coined by Patrick Desbois. Not only do the articles in this Dossier cover Anatoly Kuznetsov’s life but also the reception of his works.
Additional research articles discuss the different forms of violence: “Hungarian Guards of a Concentration Camp: Interactions and Atrocities in Bergen-Belsen” by András Szécsényi, “Women’s Experiences of Life Force Atrocities in the Baltic Ghettos, 1941–1944” by Daina S. Eglitis and “The ‘Selbstschutz’ Organization and the Bogdanovka Massacre in 1941” by Aiko Hillen.
In the source edition, Alexandra M. Szabó contextualizes a rarely-used Hungarian source collection from the National Committee for Attending Deportees (hereafter DEGOB, following the Hungarian abbreviation of Deportáltakat Gondozó Országos Bizottság) reports. The DEGOB was established in March 1945, and was one of the 14 documentation committees and centers established in postwar Europe to join the large-scale efforts of collecting and recording personal experiences that bear witness to what had happened to Jews in persecution. Nearly 100,000 survivors visited the DEGOB’s main office in Bethlen Square, in Budapest, which served as a “center for arrival.” The documents were dispersed; recovering this document also has a fascinating story.
The principle of selecting the reviews was to show the methodological and theoretical innovations of recent scholarship in Holocaust Studies. EEHS is committed to creating a space for the “good people” to stand together in the name of academic excellence and innovative work.
© 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter on behalf of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Comments on the Awarding of the 10th Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights
- Acceptance Speech of the Thomas J. Dodd Prize
- Roundtable
- Holocaust Education in Times of Russia’s War on Ukraine
- Interview
- “Good People Sometimes Don’t Know How to Stand Together.” Interview with Father Patrick Desbois, Founder of Yahad-In Unum and Head of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center’s Academic Council
- Open Forum, edited by Mykola Makhortykh
- Open Forum: Possibilities and Risks of Artificial Intelligence for Holocaust Memory
- Generative AI and Contestation and Instrumentalization of Memory About the Holocaust in Ukraine
- AI and Archives: How can Technology Help Preserve Holocaust Heritage Under the Risk of Disappearance?
- Constants and Variables: How Does the Visual Representation of the Holocaust by AI Change Over Time
- Dossier: Revisiting Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar Half a Century Later, edited by Leona Toker
- Anatoly Kuznetsov, Author of Babi Yar: The History of the Book and the Fate of the Author
- An Autobiography of Childhood: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar as Bildungsroman
- Babi Yar from Outside the USSR
- The Recontextualization of History in Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar: A Novel-Document (1966) and Sergei Loznitsa’s Film Babi Yar: Context (2021)
- In the Shadow of Babyn Yar: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Eyewitness Account of the Betrayal and Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Kyiv
- Layers of Memory in Kuznetsov’s and Trubakov’s Babi Yar Narratives
- Research Articles
- Hungarian Guards of a Concentration Camp: Interactions and Atrocities in Bergen-Belsen
- Women’s Experiences of Life Force Atrocities in the Baltic Ghettos, 1941–1944
- “Taken to German Villages and Liquidated.” The “Selbstschutz” Organization and the Bogdanovka Massacre in 1941
- Sources
- The Discovery of an Unknown Holocaust Testimony: The DEGOB Protocol of a Spouse
- Reviews
- Volodymyr Muzychenko: Volodymyr ievreiskyi. Istoriia i trahediia ievreiskoii hromady Volodymyra-Volyns’koho [Jewish Ludmir. The History and Tragedy of the Jewish Community of Volodymyr-Volynsky]
- Denisa Nešťáková, Katja Grosse-Sommer, Borbála Klacsmann, and Jakub Drábik: If this is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust
- The 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: An Attempt at a Summary
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Comments on the Awarding of the 10th Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights
- Acceptance Speech of the Thomas J. Dodd Prize
- Roundtable
- Holocaust Education in Times of Russia’s War on Ukraine
- Interview
- “Good People Sometimes Don’t Know How to Stand Together.” Interview with Father Patrick Desbois, Founder of Yahad-In Unum and Head of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center’s Academic Council
- Open Forum, edited by Mykola Makhortykh
- Open Forum: Possibilities and Risks of Artificial Intelligence for Holocaust Memory
- Generative AI and Contestation and Instrumentalization of Memory About the Holocaust in Ukraine
- AI and Archives: How can Technology Help Preserve Holocaust Heritage Under the Risk of Disappearance?
- Constants and Variables: How Does the Visual Representation of the Holocaust by AI Change Over Time
- Dossier: Revisiting Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar Half a Century Later, edited by Leona Toker
- Anatoly Kuznetsov, Author of Babi Yar: The History of the Book and the Fate of the Author
- An Autobiography of Childhood: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar as Bildungsroman
- Babi Yar from Outside the USSR
- The Recontextualization of History in Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar: A Novel-Document (1966) and Sergei Loznitsa’s Film Babi Yar: Context (2021)
- In the Shadow of Babyn Yar: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Eyewitness Account of the Betrayal and Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Kyiv
- Layers of Memory in Kuznetsov’s and Trubakov’s Babi Yar Narratives
- Research Articles
- Hungarian Guards of a Concentration Camp: Interactions and Atrocities in Bergen-Belsen
- Women’s Experiences of Life Force Atrocities in the Baltic Ghettos, 1941–1944
- “Taken to German Villages and Liquidated.” The “Selbstschutz” Organization and the Bogdanovka Massacre in 1941
- Sources
- The Discovery of an Unknown Holocaust Testimony: The DEGOB Protocol of a Spouse
- Reviews
- Volodymyr Muzychenko: Volodymyr ievreiskyi. Istoriia i trahediia ievreiskoii hromady Volodymyra-Volyns’koho [Jewish Ludmir. The History and Tragedy of the Jewish Community of Volodymyr-Volynsky]
- Denisa Nešťáková, Katja Grosse-Sommer, Borbála Klacsmann, and Jakub Drábik: If this is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust
- The 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: An Attempt at a Summary
