Professional Affiliation

M.A., University of Vienna

Wilson Center Project

Smolensk Under Nazi German Occupation

Project Summary

What is a conscious attitude to the past? What tools do historians use to investigate it? And how might tensions and contradictions between myth, documentation and memory be resolved? The project aims to contribute to our understanding of these central questions by taking as a case-study the Russian town of Smolensk during the Nazi German occupation. Concrete everyday life experiences during the 26-month occupation of Smolensk by Nazi German forces analysis of subsequent historical memories of this period, based on oral-history interviews taken almost 60 years after the events. Historiography, World War II,