Individual reparation claims and holocaust research: The Forschungsgruppe Berliner Widerstand 1933-1945 as a case study

The stacks of materials and amount of information collected as part of the reparation process since the late 1940s is immense. Personal files of people who claimed compensation from Germany comprise most of it. Because of data protection regulations much of this data is still not available to researchers. But even if we were to access this body of documents we would need to first figure out what kind of historical questions these sources would help us to answer. As we enter the so-called post-reparations period from Germany one might ask what should we do with this enormous collection of documents? Will these documents provide new insights on the Holocaust? How will they change what we know about postwar societies? 
The discussion of Forschungsgruppe Berliner Widerstand 1933-1945 will help us to better understand the challenges of working with personal compensation claims as historical documents and will raise the question about the place of German reparation in Holocaust studies and the commemoration of the Holocaust.  

Gideon Reuveni is the director of the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. He has published widely on diverse topics such as historiography, sport, reading culture, and Jewish economic history. His most recent book, Consumer Culture and the Making of Jewish Identity (2017), won the National Jewish Book Award in 2018. Currently he is working on a book-length project on the history of German reparations after the Holocaust.

Moderation: Dr. Christian Suhm


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