Heroes, Victims and Collaborators: Coming to Terms with World War II

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Efforts to address Nazi resistance, collaboration and despoliation in the postwar era shaped more than the individuals’ lives that they touched. They also conditioned relations within and between states in the burgeoning Cold War.  Legal norms were revisited and recreated in the context of victors’ justice and victims’ demands. Sorting out who were victims, collaborators and heroes became contested in different fora and assumed different characteristics as the war itself receded. The papers in this panel explore how issues of postwar justice, reparations and commemoration evolved in different parts of Eastern Europe. Yet rather than focusing solely on local responses, these papers seek to demonstrate how the broader trajectories of the Cold War influenced efforts at resolving the wartime past.

Sub Unit

• History: Central and Southeast Europe, Since 1918

Chair

• Benjamin Frommer, Northwestern U

Papers

• Demanding Reparations, Denying Restitution: The Curious Case of Postwar Czechoslovakia - David Gerlach, St Peter's U

• Between 'Old' and 'New' and 'East' and 'West': Poland and the Main Commission to Investigate German War Crimes, 1945 - Louisa McClintock, Columbia U

• Traitors into Heroes: On the History of 'Partisan Glory' in Odessa, Ukraine - Vladimir A. Solonari, U of Central Florida

Discussant

• Benjamin Frommer, Northwestern U