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Erika Daniels
English 102
Instructor: Sean Rody
February 5, 2013
Research Proposal: The Holocaust in Yugoslavia
Introduction: For my research project, I want to learn about the Holocaust in a
perspective that not many people hear. Usually when people think of the
Holocaust they assume that it involves only the Jews, Gypsies, and the
handicapped. But there are many more victims than just those three groups.
Hitler not only wanted those three groups exterminated, but any group that didn’t
fit his ‘ideal.’
The Holocaust is mostly presented from the point of view of the Germans
and the Jews, but they were not the only ones involved and there is much more
to the history than what happened between them. Somebody in my family is a
Holocaust survivor, he was originally from Yugoslavia, and put into the
Rudolfsgnad death camp for 18 months with his family when he was a child.
My purpose for this project is to lean more about the Yugoslavian view of
the Holocaust because every society experienced the Holocaust differently. I
have learned about the German and Jewish perspectives all throughout school
and I want to learn more about the Yugoslavian perspective, how they got
involved, and the hardships they faced. I hope to see the Holocaust from a new
perspective and realize the hardships that other societies faced beside the Jews.
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Research Question: What happened in the concentration camps during the
Holocaust in Yugoslavia?
Review of Literature: The person who led me to my topic is Peter Till. He is
one of my family members who endured the Holocaust when he was only a child.
He grew up in Yugoslavia and was put into the Rudolfsgnad death camp along
with his family. I have only heard small parts of his story, but when he talks I am
always intrigued. Especially because the point of view and experiences of the
Holocaust in Yugoslavia are quite different than what students are taught in
school. In school, students are taught from either the German or Jewish
perspective, but never learn what happened in some of the other countries.
Yugoslavs faced the same brutality in death camps, whether they were Jewish or
not.
The Holocaust is a subject that has always interested me, especially
because it relates to my family, and I am going to conduct an interview with Peter
for one of my sources to get the actual experience from somebody who was
there. I am taking the perspective of Yugoslavia because not many people know
what happened there, including myself, so I am interested in seeing a new
perspective of the Holocaust.
I have found many books on the Holocaust from all perspectives. I found
books from the German perspective including information about Hitler’s ideas,
encyclopedias about Yugoslavia during the Holocaust, and books about death
camps. Many of the books I have found are from different perspectives,
including Yugoslavian. Having books from different perspectives will help me get
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a better idea about the Holocaust as a whole, making it easier to narrow on the
Yugoslav point of view.
Search Plan and Relevant Sources: My plan is to continue research and find
more precise sources on Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. I have some sources
that are specifically about Yugoslavia, but I also want to find more periodicals. I
will be going back to the University of Washington to continue my research in
their reference books. Because my proposal is relevant to history, I have been
looking in many history books and encyclopedias that have great factual
information about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia. I will be interviewing Peter as
soon as I conduct enough research so I can go into the interview with specific
and precise questions in mind. He will be one of my main sources of perspective
because he experienced the Holocaust himself. My sources give me a wide
variety of perspective, historical context and events, and the endurances of living
during the Holocaust.
Timeline and Challenges: To ensure that I will complete this project in a timely
manner I am going to be creating a calendar with deadlines I am setting myself. I
need to first continue my research and I want to have everything researched and
be prepared for my interview within the next week. I will then sort through my
research and use only the articles and information that I feel are relevant to my
topic, as well as precise. After next week I will be creating an outline for my first
essay regarding periodicals and beginning my first draft. From then on I will be
continuing my research for the essay on books. My calendar will keep me on
track with a timeline to ensure that my work is being completed in a timely
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manner. After continuing both of my papers, I will combine the information I
gathered to create my final paper. Some challenges will be finding credible
periodicals. I have been having trouble finding them on Yugoslavia because it is
not the ‘main’ focus of the Holocaust. It is also troubling because most articles
refer to the Holocaust like war in Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, rather than what
happened during the German Holocaust.
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Working Bibliography
Alan, David, and Peter Witte. "Ernsthausen Population and Religion Growth from
1823-1922." Ernsthausen. 06 Feb. 2013
This website was referred to me by Peter Till, who survived the Holocaust.
Ernsthausen was a village in Yugoslavia and gives the story of the Yugoslav’s
perspective of how they were pulled into the Holocaust by Russians as well as
Germans. This gives the story of a typical Yugoslav family describing the
heritage, and norms of the culture for background information. The Till family
came from Ernsthausen and was put into the Rudolfsgnad death camp. It gives
a background of the culture during that time, which is a helpful source.
Anderson, Mark M. "The Child Victim As Witness To The Holocaust: An
American Story?." Jewish Social Studies 14.1 (2007): 1-22. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
This article is very interesting because it is regarding children of the Holocaust as
Americans see it. The author talks about how the American media victimizes the
children of the Holocaust for empathy. This will be a good source for me
because my main source is a person who survived the Holocaust as a child and
it will be interesting to see the difference between what this author is saying and
what actually happened with children in the death camps. Maybe we are
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victimizing children in America, but it is the reality and this source will help me
demonstrate the hardships of the victims of the Holocaust who were children at
the time.
Dulic, Tomislav. "Tito's Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis Of Rummel's Work
On Democide." Journal Of Peace Research 41.1 (2004): 85-102.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
This article shows that some historians are highly biased and this author tries to
revert from that, giving the facts. This article is regarding the mass killings during
the Holocaust and contains information on the Genocide and the death camps
particularly in Yugoslavia giving a different perspective than average. It explains
the political standpoint of Yugoslavia at the time and will give great background
information to have. This is a credible source and will bring me information
regarding perspective.
Encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, 1933-1945. Bloomington [u.a.: Indiana
Univ. P, 2009.
This encyclopedia is a great source for helping me find our more about the
Rudolfsgnad death camp individually. It is an encyclopedia describing every
death camp and what happened within them, including how people were treated
and why they were treated that way. It will give me more details about the
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Rudolfsgnad camp that I am trying to focus on, which will help me get facts
specifically about that one rather than death camps as a whole. The
encyclopedia is a credible source and contains many historical facts about what
went on in each camp.
Friedlander, Henry. The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath. Ed.
Omer Bartov. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
One of the chapters in this book is called “step by step, the expansion of murder,
1939-1941,” which is a great chapter because it states that it has a different point
of view than the usual because it addresses the link between “euthanasia” and
“the final solution.” The point of the chapter is showing that Hitler not only
wanted to destroy the Jews, Gypsies, and handicapped, but also anyone who is
an “alien race.” I like that this chapter notes that it is common for people to think
that there were only those three groups that were being exterminated, but there
are many more. When Henry Friedlander mentioned that, I knew that it would
help my point considering the Yugoslavs are not usually thought of being
involved in the Holocaust because all the attention is put on Jews. He is a very
credible source especially because he was a survivor of Auschwitz and has great
inside information.
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Goldberg, Amos. "2. The Victim's Voice And Melodramatic Aesthetics In
History." History & Theory 48.3 (2009): 220-237. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
This article not only has good information on the Holocaust and what happened,
but it contains direct quotes from victims/survivors of the death camps. This will
give me a perspective of more people who survived the camps. This source is
credible because the author used research from the Holocaust writer/researcher,
Friedlander. This article will give me better perspective from actual survivors of
the Holocaust.
Gordiejew, Paul Benjamin. The Yugoslav Experiment in Secular Jewishness.
European Judaism 40(2), 43-70.
This article was written by a Holocaust historian who has written many other
articles and some books. I got this article from the University of Washington and
it is a good source because it is reviewed by many scholars and has great
information about the Jewish people in the Holocaust. It addresses the Jewish
people who lived in Yugoslavia, meaning that I will be able to use this article as a
perspective from Yugoslavia, which helps with my proposal and overall topic of
research. Therefore, I will not only get the Yugoslav perspective, but also Jewish
Yugoslav perspectives.
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Gordiejew, Paul Benjamin. Voices of Yugoslav Jewry. Albany: State University of
New York, 1999. Print.
I am very happy with this source because it gives the point of view of both Jews
and Yugoslavs. It shows the before and after affects of the Holocaust. It also
explains what a Yugoslav Jew is, giving history and also describing their identity.
This is a great source because it is all about perspective. It is about perspective
of being not only Yugoslav, but it is about Jewish people living in Yugoslavia.
Which is great because it gives me even more perspective and although it will be
biased because they are Yugoslavian, that is exactly what I am looking for
because my whole project is regarding perspective. He is a great source
because he is a published author and a sociology scholar who studied the
Holocaust and has written many articles and books regarding the Holocaust.
Lace, William W. The death camps. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 1998.
This source is also another good source for learning about what happened inside
the death camps. The author William Lace has many great sources for his
research for this book. He makes it easy to understand broken up into parts like
“The Subhumans”, “The Master-race”, and “The Final Solution,” to give the full
story of what happened through both German and Jewish perspectives. This is
not going be a source that will help me with perspective, but it will give me a
better idea of what happened within the camps as a whole.
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Lindquist, David H. "Meeting A Moral Imperative: A Rationale For Teaching The
Holocaust." Clearing House 84.1 (2011): 26-30. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
This article defines how to look at the Holocaust while researching it. It talks
about what it means to be human and humane, and explains how to research the
topic in an unbiased way. This article will be helpful because it gives reasoning
behind the humanity of the Holocaust and gives a perspective regarding the
different viewpoints.
Mazower, Mark. Hitler's empire: How the Nazis ruled Europe. New York: Penguin
P, 2008.
This book is a great source for any background information I want on the German
Nazi perspective of the Holocaust. It demonstrates what Hitler thought of
Yugoslavs and why they were not his “ideal.” It also gives a description of what
Hitler was looking for in his “ideal race” and why he exterminated everyone else.
It also contains an in-depth timeline of the entire Holocaust by year which is
helpful to show where Yugoslavia fits in. It will give a nice overview for what
happened in Germany so I can explain that while I am showing the Yugoslav
perspective. I will also be able to better understand Hitler’s thinking and why he
did the things he did. Mark Mazower is a credible source. He is a British
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historian and does all of his work on European history. He has also written
multiple books regarding the Holocaust.
Melson, Charles D. "German Counter-Insurgency Revisited." Journal Of Slavic
Military Studies 24.1 (2011): 115-146. Academic Search Complete. Web.
6 Feb. 2013.
This article is very interesting because it is questioning the recorded history of
the Holocaust and as a result is being revised. This shows that there might be
more to the Holocaust than what has been paid attention to. An article like this is
great for modern day perspectives, and might bring out more of the perspective
that I am looking for as the Yugoslav perspective. Charles Melson fought in
WWII, and was a part of the experience of war himself. He has written books
and is a credible historian. This article is very interesting because it shows the
history being revised, which can be helpful with my perspective.
Milchman, Alan, and Alan Rosenberg. "The Need For Philosophy To Confront
The Holocaust As A Transformational Event." Dialogue & Universalism
13.3/4 (2003): 65. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Feb. 2013.
This academic journal shows that the Holocaust is a very important part of
history. It suggests that historically, it needs to be paid more attention to. It was
a transforming event and has a great perspective. It addresses the mass killings
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in Yugoslavia and the war against the ex-soviet union. This article brings much
attention to Yugoslavia and I think will be one of my best sources of a journal
database. Both the authors have written many journals on the Holocaust
including articles regarding the ideas of how the Nazis think. They are both
credible Holocaust researchers.
Mojzes, Paul. Balkan genocides: Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth
century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011.
This book is by a credible author who writes about the Holocaust. He writes
about the purposes of the Germans for putting the “alien” groups through the
suffering. This book has lots of reasoning behind German thinking, which is
necessary for me to understand if I am going to talk about the Yugoslav
perspective in relation to Germany. This book is going to be very helpful in the
reasons for ethnic cleansing by the Germans and is going to give me great
background information.
Piskorski, Jan M. "From Munich Through Wannsee To Auschwitz: The Road To
The Holocaust." Journal Of The Historical Society 7.2 (2007): 155-175.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Feb. 2013.
This article shows exactly how and why the German Nazis made their way into
the Slavic land. They were originally going to exterminate more Jews but they
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ended up exterminating the Slavs as well. This is going to be a great source
because it will describe what happened in Yugoslavia specifically and how
Germany went about ruling them. This is going to help me with the question
regarding why they were involved and what happened. The author is a
European historian and has written many books about events in Europe,
including the Holocaust. He is a very credible source and this article is going to
help me narrow specifically on Yugoslavia.
"Rudolfsgnad - chronicle of a Danube-Swabian municipality 1866-1944." 6 Feb.
2013.
This website was recommended to me by Peter Till, who is from Yugoslavia and
survived the Holocaust. The website gives the point of view of the
extermination/death camps from Yugoslavs, and the history behind the
Rudolfsgnad death camp, where he was put with his family. This website article
also give the background on the development of the town Rudolfsgnad, which is
important to know how it got involved. The article also mentions how the men of
Rudolfsgnad were badly abused and killed by Tito partisans, which gives me
information about whom the Yugoslavs were dealing with. That part is very
helpful because I have another article regarding Tito partisans, which can help
me relate the two perspectives to get a better idea of what happened. This
source overall is going to be extremely helpful, especially with perspective
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because this site is a branch off of a Slavic database, so I will be sure to get the
perspective that I am looking for.
Till, Peter. "Your Experience in the Rudolfsgnad Death Camp."
Personal interview.
Peter Till is a member of my family who lived in Yugoslavia during the Holocaust
and was put into the Rudolfsgnad death camp. He was there for 18 months
when he was a young child with his family and is a great source for my research
on the Yugoslavian perspective. He will have information that I am not able to
find in books because he experienced it first hand. I will be able to understand
more on a personal level, the experiences the Yugoslavs went through during the
times of the Holocaust and what it is like to be in a death camp as a young child.
He is going to be my greatest source and he will be able to provide me with
information as an insider.
Witztum, Eliezer, and Ruth Malkinson. "Examining Traumatic Grief And Loss
Among Holocaust Survivors." Journal Of Loss & Trauma 14.2 (2009):
129-143. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Feb. 2013.
This article shows the outcomes of some Holocaust survivors and how they are
dealing with the pain of their past. This is a great article because it will give me a
perspective from the survivors, which could help me understand what happened
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and the trauma these people endured. Witztum is an expert in 20th century
history and Malkinson is an expert in cognitive therapy, which she helped the
survivors in this article with. I will not need the therapy part of this article, but the
stories of their patients will be what helps me with perspective.
"Yugoslavia." Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan, 1990.
1716-1722.
This source is going to give me factual information without as much bias as my
other sources regarding Yugoslavia and the Holocaust. This source presents a
timeline and shows what exactly happened from a historical perspective in
Yugoslavia during that time period and Yugoslavia got involved. This is a great
source because I will be able to support my ideas with facts from this
encyclopedia and contains lots of great information on Yugoslavia alone. An
encyclopedia is a great source to have because it gives the facts I need. The
bibliography for the section of Yugoslavia has credible books by Holocaust
historians to support their facts.