Wehrmacht’s role in the Holocaust probed in talk
A LEADING authority on the Holocaust will share his exposé of the German Army’s chilling role in ‘The Final Solution’ when he visits the University of Huddersfield next week.
Dr Waitman Beorn’s forensic research into how the Wehrmacht enabled genocide during the Nazi regime uncovered horrific crimes more often associated with the SS, including mass executions, forced labour, rape and grave robbing.
Those who refused to participate were only lightly punished, debunking the widely held idea they were conscripted to commit murder.
“I’m interested in telling stories and presenting history as it happened to individuals, because it’s not just some vague notion,” said Dr Beorn, an Iraq combat veteran and senior lecturer in History at Northumbria University.
“When we say the German Army was complicit, that means people were making choices to do things.”
The lecture, at the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre at the University of Huddersfield, is one of two events to mark Holocaust
Memorial Day.
The centre’s director Emma King said: “I’m really pleased that Dr Beorn is coming here because his work is in an area that is not well known in general by the public.
“People are familiar with Auschwitz, they’re familiar with the idea of concentration camps, people know about gas chambers. Fewer people know that the Holocaust started in Eastern Europe with civilians being shot into pits in their thousands, not just by the SS, but by members of the German military.”
The guest lecture marks a new partnership between the University of Huddersfield, the Holocaust Survivors’
Friendship Association which runs the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre; the world’s oldest Holocaust archive, the Wiener Holocaust Library; and the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London – the leading academic centre of its kind in Europe.
The Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership will promote cutting-edge research into the Holocaust and other genocides.
Dr Beorn’s lecture, Killing the ‘Clean’ Wehrmacht: The Reality of the German Army and the Holocaust, draws on his first book, Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht
and the Holocaust in Belarus (Harvard University Press), and is at 6.30pm on Thursday, January 30.
Tickets, priced £6 and £4 for concessions, are available online or by calling 01484 471939.
A Holocaust Memorial Day event will be held on Monday, January 27 at the centre, with contributions from Holocaust survivor and honorary award recipient Iby Knill BEM.
The exhibition and pop-up cafe will be open from 5pm and the event begins at 6.30pm. Places are free but limited and can be reserved online at www.holocaustlearning.org.uk/ events/holocaust-memorial-day.