In October 1952, Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong compared notes on the still relatively new Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, IfZ), wondering whether its staff members would be capable of conducting research on National Socialism. While non-Jewish German researchers claimed that Jews were too preoccupied with and emotional about the Holocaust, these two Jewish researchers raised questions concerning the Germans’ political affiliations.
Continue reading Too German for Holocaust Research? Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong on the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1952Author: Josefine Langer Shohat
Josefine Langer Shohat is a PhD candidate at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and currently a Minerva Fellow at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. In her dissertation project, she examines transnational networks of Holocaust researchers in Europe and Israel from 1945 to the early 1960s, with a focus on the Wiener Library. Prior to coming to Jerusalem, Josefine was an Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich PhD Fellow and a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute London in 2021. Josefine holds an MA in Modern History and a BA in History and Area Studies from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.