NIOD Rewind Podcast on War & Violence

The Diamond of Banjarmasin, a diamond looted by the Dutch in 1859 and sent to the Netherlands two years later, will be restituted to Indonesia. Anne van Mourik talks about the restitution with Klaas Stutje (Expert Centre Restitution NIOD). How does the restitution of looted colonial objects actually work? What does it mean to return such a colonial object, and can we see it as a form of transitional justice? And what histories does the diamond reveal?

Wist je dat tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog er een compleet verscholen dorp bestond in Nederland? De bosrijke omgeving rondom de Gemeente Epe kwam goed van pas kwam bij de onderduik van Joden, verzetsstrijders en anderen die zich verborgen moesten houden voor de nazi’s.

In deze aflevering duiken Anne van Mourik (NIOD), Catharine Aretakis (Universiteit Utrecht) en Epenaar Willem Veldkamp in het oorlogsverhaal van de omgeving van Epe. Hoe kan het dat er in Epe een ‘goede geest voor verzet’ was? Wat moesten deze mensen op het spel zetten? En, als we wat uitzoomen en Epe vergelijken met andere regio’s in Nederland: waarom verschilde de mate van verzet tussen verschillende lokale gemeenschappen? En wat leren geschiedenissen als die van Epe ons over de rol van sterke lokale gemeenschappen in het afremmen van massaal geweld?

Afbeelding tegel: Het Verscholen dorp, Pas-Opweg, 8076 Vierhouten. Gelegen nabij Vierhouten in de provincie Gelderland. Wikimedia Commons.

Fotocredits: Lodewijk Booij, Mariette Veldkamp

Language:This is a special one-off episode in Dutch. All upcoming episodes will be back in English. A big thank you to Catharine Aretakis for being so flexible and for joining us in Dutch, which is not her native language.

What is happening in Tigray? In this episode Anne van Mourik speaks with Teklehaymanot (Tekle) Weldemichael (University of Manchester) about the strong evidence that Ethiopia committed genocide in Tigray, and the (lack of) academic freedom to publish on it. 
The war between Ethiopia and Tigray began in 2020 and saw widespread atrocities, including mass killings, systematic rape, starvation, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. How to analyse this mass violence? Did the ceasefire of 2022 truly end the violence? How became the bodies and especially wombs of Tigrayan women sites of violence during the conflict? And what kind of challenges do scholars face, who want to publish on what is happening in Tigray?
Image: Protestor holding sign in support of women in Tigray 2021, CC BY 2.0 Wikimedia Commons.

Are perpetrators of mass atrocities really “monsters”? Or are they, in fact, normal people, like us? Anne van Mourik and Lucy Gaynor interview Professor Alette Smeulers (University Groningen), who argues that those who commit extreme violence are often far more ordinary than we would like to believe. We discuss Alette’s research - which looks at many cases including the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, Apartheid in South Africa, and military dictatorships in South America - and ask: what patterns emerge? Do different contexts produce different types of perpetrators, such as “fanatics”, “masterminds”, and “followers"? Does social media, in our modern age, act as a kind of fanatic infrastructure, creating spaces like the manosphere, or even enabling perpetration? What is the role of “strongmen” like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu, in the perpetration of atrocities? How do other leaders, like NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, play a part in normalising violence?
Photo: Adolf Eichman in Ramle Prison1961 (Wikimedia Commons)

In the first episode of Season 7, Anne van Mourik talks with Susie Protschky (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) to explore the question of perpetrator trauma in the aftermath of the Dutch–Indonesian War. They look at how members of Indies diaspora and former combatants in the Netherlands live with (post-)war trauma, including those implicated in violence and oppressive regimes. 
What does perpetrator trauma mean? How does trauma show up in everyday life and in political discourse? How is it sometimes used to shape narratives of victimhood that aim to mitigate questions of responsibility? 
As the conversation unfolds, Susie and Anne end up circling a familiar knot: why focus on perpetrator trauma at all? Are we in danger of losing sight of historical violence and suffering by shifting attention to memory politics and postwar narratives? Or is this precisely where the political work of history continues to unfold?

Image: Burial at sea of Dutch soldier, 1950 (NIMH)