Dr. Alexander richie, who serves as the convener of our president ial councillors, to lead dr. Gerhardt wineburg and dr. Jeff mcgargy. Alex has been involved with our museum since the first appearance at our 2014 international conference. And in those five years, we have kept her quite busy. Many meetings, committees. And, also, as you heard this morning, leading a lot of our educational travel tours. She she has been has a deep and personal connection to the holocaust, as her fatherinlaw, who im sure shes going to explain more about, was, himself, in auschwitz during world war ii. So to hear the latest in holocau holocaust scholarship and to look at what was going on in june 1944, its my pleasure to ask dr. Richie to come up. Thank you so much. This is, indeed, a topic very, very close to my heart, as most of you know. I live in warsaw in poland, as just heard my fatherinlaw was in auschwitz when a Founding Member of which was an organization to try and save jews from the ghetto. Then aided the warsaw uprising. The warsaw uprising was immediately put into prison for his pains. Later was in solidarity. Then when the wall collapsed, became foreign minister of poland a couple of times. But his great passion in life was talking about what had happened. Not just in poland but in germany and the soefviet union d central europe. To make sure that this history was not just remembered but that it was understood. That it was constantly scrutinized and that new research was also listened to and and scholarship was always encouraged. Holocaust research has constantly been changing since the war began with the horrors of the revelations of the camps. And then, of course, the nuremburg trials also revealed the extent of nazi crimes. A member of the american Prosecution Team coined the term genocide. There were initiatives to remember the tragedy right away. Things like the the creation of the warsaw ghetto memorial. The rediscovery of the archives and many other things right after the war. But Public Interest tended to wane and academic and intellectual interest also until really the ikeman trial in 1961. And really exploded since the 1980s and now there are many, many new directions. First of all, examining the sheer scale and complexity of the of the holocaust, which i know that jeff will be talking about. Jeffs work, which points to the tens of thousands of camps and killing sites in the in the holocaust. And theres new focus from everything from looking more at perpetrators. At collaboration. At the genesis of antisemitism. At geography. Many, many other things besides, which i know well hear a little more about today from our two mag s magnificent speakers. Im deeply honored and very pleased indeed to be asked to introduce these two magnificent speakers. Jeff, Senior Applied Research scholar and the Mandel Center for advanced holocaust studies and the United StatesHolocaust Memorial museum where he served since 2000 as project director and editor in chief for the museums sevenvolume encyclopedia of the camps and ghettos between 1933 and 1945. The first volume, which appeared in june 2009, received National Jewish book award and judaica referenced award amongst other distinctions. Jeff received his doctorate from from ohio state university. And is recipient among other honors. Work upon which he based his work inside hitlers high command. Which was also the winner of the society for military histories 2001 distinguished award. He is also the author of annihilation and many other things as well. I am also deeply, deeply honored to have gerhardt wineburg, who we consider to be the dean of historians. Internationallyrecognized authority on nazi germany and origins and courses of world war ii. He is a Professor Emeritus of history at chapel hill. He is the author or editor of so many books and articles, its almost impossible to start to list them or wed be here till midnight. I just wanted to say that i used gerhardts work when i was starting out as a historian. And i have well found companies of most copies of most of his works on my bookshelf. Just looking one out of the world at arms, which is so extraordinary and really encapsulates gerhardts work because not only is it scholarly and discusses the war and so on. But it brings his incredible life experience. Born in hamburg. Working in japan after the war. And really being to understanding, learning about, the entire world. And so the history of world war ii is seen, from a military perspective, political perspective, social, economic, and many other perspectives. And he manages to weave all of these things into this Extraordinary International global perspective, which is extremely rare. So its with great, great gratitude and honor that i welcome gerhardt, first, to the stand. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Can you hear me . Thats a big help. For some time, there was a scholarly debate that attracted a good deal of attention. Between those who called themselves or were called intentionalists and functionalists. The former argued that the systematic killing of jews was planned and organized from the top. While the latter held that the process was one of steady radicalization. Pushed forward, over time, by those involved as they engaged in evermore radical procedures culminating, at some point, in systematic mass killing. The careful attention to local detail and initiatives that characterize the work of those who called and considered themselves functionalists has certainly contributed greatly to our ability to follow the technical developments of mass murder. And the extent to which individual police, military, and administrative personnel could and did exercise their own judgment about the procedures to be followed. Whatever the prior developments and the making of local decisions, state of formal decision at the very top. Even some of those writing about the hurricane still prefer to ignore the relevant evidence and continue to advocate something of a functionalist interpretation. We know, from the romanian record that was determined to be accurate by the german official who checked it at the time, that when adolf hitler met romainnia dictator on june 12th, 1941, he asked hitler what was to be done about the jews in the soviet territory that their armies were about to invade . An important issue for antanescu, since the area that would be seized initially was known to contain a very large number of jews. Hitler told them that they were all to be killed. An instruction that the evidence indicates he had earlier orally given. We also know now, we have a clear confirmation of the meeting before the invasion, at which a high ss official told the commanders, the murder commandos, that were to follow the german armies into the soviet union, that a major part of their assignment was to be to kill all the jews. Ill come back to the source for this resolution of a subject that was once quite controversial. When i get to another point. All the evidence we now have leaves no doubt that the commanders of the battalions of the order police, units with members more than ten times as numerous as the famous, were similarly instructed before the invasion of june 1941. Hitlers own telling. The minister of war in croatia in 1941 that all jews in europe were to be killed. And his telling the grand of jerusalem in november 1941 that all jews in the middle east and the rest of the world were also to be killed. Both recorded in the german documents published decades ago. Although, these very clear and explicit records are still ignored by many scholars. A trend in the literature that has not moved as far and widely as this speaker thinks is needed is that of the very close interrelationship of the war as a fight between germany and those it attacked on the one hand. And the holocaust on the other. Its only quite recently that those writing on the wall, other than myself, include any references to the holocaust at all. And, similarly, those who write on the holocaust pay very much too little attention to the realities of the fighting. Let me illustrate this issue with some examples. The murder commandos, in many cases, killed men, not whole families. In the first weeks of the german invasion of the soviet union. This is occasionally as evidence for a first step, that would be followed by radicalization, subsequently. What is missing here is any reference to the reality of the early fighting on the Eastern Front. The german assault surprised the red army that stalin had held back as he disregarded all warnings from his own Intelligence Service and from the british and American Governments. The German Forces, under these circumstances, advance very rapidly. And the german armys chief of staff, general holda, was sure on july 3rd, 1941, that the campaign had succeeded. And that the rapid advance of German Forces showed that a quick victory was certain. This matter is a practical matter. That a murder commander had to follow an advancing German Military unit through some of the most densely jewish settled part of europe at the rate of about 30 miles a day. They were simply not in a position to do anything else. The members of the unit would shoot the local men and come back when the front slowed down to kill the women and children. The units members did what they could in the circumstances of the moment. And had no need either for new orders or the personal supervision of himla, who as we know, repeated went to the east in the summer of 41 to watch the progress of his new program. Just as subsequently, he would visit auschwitz in the summer of 1942 to observe the killing procedure implemented there. Neither hitler, nor antonescu cared. That was indeed a subject left to local initiatives and preferences. A most critical point about the fighting, namely, that the allies first contained, and then ended, the holocaust also rarely receives the attention it deserves. Please, do not be offended if i suggest that if the germans had won and obtained control of the 47 of the then48 states of the usa, that the japanese were willing for them to have, there would surely have been, in any american group, some themselves, or their parents or grandparents, would have been killed because they were jewish. Some in this audience would have been killed as jews. Some nonjews would have been killed because of some handicap. And some would have contracted polio. And either died as a result or have been crippled and then killed because the two doctors whose discovery conquered that disease in the 1950s would both have been killed because they happened to be jewish. On the other side of the relationship between the course of the fighting and the holocaust, those who written endlessly about field Marshal Rommel and his campaigns in north africa, generally ignore a critical part of his assignment. He was, indeed, originally sent there in 1941 to salvage italys colony, libya, lest the italian people dump mussolini. When that colony was lost to british forces. A point that was a major worry for hitler. But why push the africa corps, as it was called, into egypt and the middle east in 1942 . And do this at a time when the primary military for germany was the Eastern Front where things in the had obviously had not gone the way hitler and his generals had confidently anticipated. The germans intended italy to have egypt and the middle east for its oil. While germany would get its oil from the caucuses. Caucuses. In spite of these realities. In spite of the necessities for a renewed offensive against the soviet union. The moment in the summer of 1942, it looked as if the africa court might get to cairo and beyond. This was not done because hitler wanted the members to get a good tan or that hitler expected them to dismantle one of the pyramids so that it could be redirected next to the altar in berlin. The whole point was that all the jews in the middle east, about 1 million at the time, were to be killed before the area was turned over to italy because hitler and hymnal are for good reasons of Prior Experience did not trust the italians to do so, but did trust ronald to direct the murder commander to do what hitler had personally promised a grandma fuchsia of jerusalem a little bit more than half a year earlier. In recent decades, there have been significant and positive developments in the study of the holocaust as a result of several trends and especially important trends that have been the declassification of very important irrelevant records. The agreement of the British Government in 1996, to the opening of their interception and decoding of the reports of the German Order Police has transformed our understanding of the early stages of the holocaust in 1941. It is now clear that these Police Battalions included not only about ten times as many man as the murder commandoes, over 25,000 has compared with close to 3000. Also, undoubtedly killed far more jews than the commandoes whose reports because of their far earlier availability for research has been a central piece of evidence in all prior studies of the subject and remain of great importance. The recent publication by the german city of breman, on the participation of the holocaust of two Police Battalions from that city both supplements what we already knew about such. Also provides vivid details about their participation and such specific operations as the notorious september 1941 mass murder of over 30,000 jews in the ukraine in kyiv. As well as their guarding of transports of jews from the rest transit camp in the netherlands to auschwitz beginning in the summer of 1942. Perhaps other german cities will follow the example of breman and facilitates first the research and then the publication of the activities of Police Battalions that originated in vienna. Additional Important Information has come to light with a declassification that came out of the 19 and 1998 nazi war crimes disclosure and japanese record has passed by the american congress. A major feature of that role was that it lifted the automatic exclusion from the classification with you and from the implementation of freedom of information requests up two categories of american rebels. Those relating to intelligence sources and methods and those called Foreign Government information, a general name utilized by u. S. Government for material provided by the United States by a Foreign Government that had a security classification at the time it was given to our government. While records in the former category could now be subjected to systematic declassification review, and the latter case, the government that had provided that information, in general great britain, would be asked for its consent for declassification the procedure and the former category promptly led to massive deep classifications, and work on these newly opened records has just begun. In the process of requesting permission to declassify in the latter category, it turned out that the british were unusually cooperative. As chair of the Historical Advisory Panel advising the Interagency Working Group that had been established to implement the new law, i was told by several of those at the working end of the declassification process that this rather dramatic break with all of their Prior Experience in dealing with the british in declassification records was most likely due to the widely known personal interest of then president clinton and the general topic. If there were a hold up, he might telephone his friend pray minister tony blair at 10 downing street. Those in the relevant offices in and near london did not want the rocket from 10 downing street. Since by definition the records in question were at least half a century old, the highly unusual rapidity of the agreement to be declassified was unlikely to cause any real problems for british security. An important byproduct of the declassification of american intelligence records was the publication of books by Richard Brightman and others about the postwar american recruitment of nazis. Some with exceedingly dubious records by american intelligence agencies. One significant product of the declassification of Foreign Government information, with the consent of the British Government is the collection of summaries of british interrogations of murder commando leader oldendorf in the summer of 1945, before he was turned over to the americans in december of that year in which hillary earl could therefore utilize for rural her goal on the trial of commando leaders. It is reasonable to expect that in the coming years, other researchers will find Important Information in the material that the british allowed the American Government to open up. Obviously, the American Government could ask for declassification of only those british documents of which copies had been given to it at the time. That left open the question of british records, especially their Intelligence Services, of which no copies were to be found in american archives. That process also has been moving forward slowly but steadily in recent years, and scholars have been making good use of these newly opened records, we can expect important publications based on these declassified records in the coming years. There is also now a clearer perspective on two quite different passage of the events. A way in which some type to profit on the murder of their former neighbors is illustrated quite dramatically by the 2012 book of janet gross, Golden Harvest events at the periphery of the holocaust. Which offers insight into the digging up of both the dead and related mate