New Books in Genocide Studies

• Stanislav Kulchytsky, "The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor" (CIUS Press, 2018) - A Conversation with Bohdan Klid

  The Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor (CIUS Press, 2018) is a distillation of thirty years of study of the topic by one of Ukraine’s leading historians. In this account, Stanislav Kulchytsky ably incorporates a vast array of sources and literature that have become available in the past three decades into a highly readable narrative, explaining the motives, circumstances and course of this terrible crime against humanity. As the author shows, the Holodomor was triggered by the Bolshevik effort to build a communist socioeconomic order in the Soviet Union. For the peasant majority of the population, this meant the forcible collectivization of individual farms, the seizure of livestock and farm implements, and the conversion of independent farmers into agricultural laborers. Excessive requisitioning of grain and other foodstuffs in the collectivization drive led to famine and deaths in grain-producing regions of the USSR by early 1932. In Ukraine, punitive measures authorized by the Kremlin’s top leadership greatly worsened the famine in late 1932 and turned it into the Holodomor, which claimed more than three million lives in the first half of 1933. Identifying key events and decisions that produced the Holodomor, Kulchytsky analyzes economic and political factors, including the national dimension in Ukraine. The book begins with the author’s address to the reader, presenting his view of the Holodomor as genocide. In addition to the main text, the volume includes a preface, afterword, glossary, list of abbreviations and acronyms, bibliography, and a short essay on the author and his writings. The Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine: An Anatomy of the Holodomor was prepared for publication by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. HREC undertook the translation of Stanislav Kulchytsky’s monograph Ukraïns’kyi holodomor v konteksti polityky Kremlia pochatku 1930 rr. as part of its efforts to make available in English seminal works by Ukrainian scholars of the Holodomor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

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• Brendan Simms, "Hitler: A Global Biography" (Basic Books, 2019)

  Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of that eras main figures. In the past three years, three important new books have reassessed Hitler's life, beliefs and actions. Two of the authors, Volker Ulrich and Peter Longerich, are historians of Germany who are German. The third, our guest for today's interview, is British. In his new book Hitler: A Global Biography (Basic Books, 2019), Brendan Simms  offers us a different Hitler, one much more focused on global capitalism and on the Anglo-American world than either Ulrich of Longerich.  Simms argues that fears that Germany would lose the economic and demographic competition with Britain and especially the US sat at the heart of Hitler's world view. Anti-Semitism, fears of German particularism, scientific understandings of race, all of these appear in Simms' portrait of Hitler. But they are joined by a constant fear that the American system was simultaneously seductive and corrupting, and that Germans and Germany would not be able to resist. This, Simms argues, drove many of Hitler's decisions, especially in the 1920s and 30s. We had some technological problems getting connected for the interview and had only 30 minutes to talk. But Simms does a marvelous job using that time to lay out the broad outlines of his argument and to sketch in some of his main lines of defense. It's a fascinating interview. Not everyone will agree with his conclusions. But at the least the book will prompt a stimulating debate about the role of the west in HItler's thinking. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

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• Alexander Kimel and Martin Kimel, "The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025)

  The Pessimists Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025) is a personal depiction of life in Poland set against the Nazi and Soviet takeovers of Europe and their cataclysmic aftermaths. It is the compelling memoir of Alexander Kimel, taking him from a shtetl to a Nazi ghetto to liberation and the parallel Holocaust story of his beloved wife, written by their son. It is also the harrowing story of his wife, Eva, whose father was murdered in the "Holocaust by Bullets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

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• Adam A. Blackler, "An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

  At the turn of the twentieth century, depictions of the colonized world were prevalent throughout the German metropole. Tobacco advertisements catered to the erotic gaze of imperial enthusiasts with images of Ovaherero girls, and youth magazines allowed children to escape into "exotic domains" where their imaginations could wander freely. While racist beliefs framed such narratives, the abundance of colonial imaginaries nevertheless compelled German citizens and settlers to contemplate the world beyond Europe as a part of their daily lives. An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022) reorients our understanding of the relationship between imperial Germany and its empire in Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia). Colonialism had an especially significant effect on shared interpretations of the Heimat (home/homeland) ideal, a historically elusive perception that conveyed among Germans a sense of place through national peculiarities and local landmarks. Focusing on colonial encounters that took place between 1842 and 1915, Adam A. Blackler reveals how Africans confronted foreign rule and altered German national identity. As Blackler shows, once the façade of imperial fantasy gave way to colonial reality, German metropolitans and white settlers increasingly sought to fortify their presence in Africa using juridical and physical acts of violence, culminating in the first genocide of the twentieth century. Grounded in extensive archival research, An Imperial Homeland enriches our understanding of German identity, allowing us to see how a distant colony with diverse ecologies, peoples, and social dynamics grew into an extension of German memory and tradition. It will be of interest to German Studies scholars, particularly those interested in colonial Africa. Dr. Adam A. Blackler is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming. He is a historian of modern Germany and southern Africa, whose research emphasizes the transnational dimensions of imperial occupation and settler-colonial violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

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• Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, "Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48" (Cambridge UP, 2014)

  Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48 (Cambridge UP, 2014) tells a story of Polish and Slovak Holocaust survivors returning to homes that no longer existed in the aftermath of the Second World War. It focuses on their daily efforts to rebuild their lives in the radically changed political and social landscape of post-war Eastern Europe. Such an analysis shifts the perspective from post-war violence and emigration to post-war reconstruction. Using a comparative approach, Anna Cichopek-Gajraj discusses survivors' journeys home, their struggles to retain citizenship and repossess property, their coping with antisemitism, and their efforts to return to 'normality'. She emphasizes the everyday communal and personal experiences of survivors in the context of their relationships with non-Jews. In essence, by focusing on the daily efforts of Polish and Slovak Jews to rebuild their lives, the author investigates the limits of belonging in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

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