Interethnic Relations in Buczacz, Galicia, 1500-1945, and the Origins of the Holocaust

FAIN: FA-53849-08

Omer Bartov
Brown University (Providence, RI 02912-9100)

This project investigates relations between Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews in the town of Buczacz from its foundation to the aftermath of the Holocaust. Situated in the borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Buczacz was under Habsburg rule after 1772, came under Poland in the interwar period, and was occupied by the Soviets and the Germans in World War II, during which time its Jewish inhabitants were murdered and the Poles ethnically cleansed. Today it is in Ukraine. The project will reconstruct interethnic relations over an extended period of time; examine communal responses to war and violence; and investigate how this past is remembered and commemorated. The project has much wider relevance to the history of Eastern Europe?s borderlands regions and to the history of genocide and communal coexistence and violence more generally. By January 2008 I will complete my research and hope to use the fellowship for writing up the book.

Associated Products

Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relationships in Buczacz, 1939-44 (Article)
Title: Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relationships in Buczacz, 1939-44
Author: Omer Bartov
Abstract: Analysis of testimonies by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Eastern Galicia
Year: 2011
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: East European Politics and Societies

Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Book)
Title: Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz
Author: Omer Bartov
Abstract: An examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and even family members against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II. For more than 400 years, Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly. Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood. For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. The book profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov’s book isn’t just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It’s a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities—much more easily than we might think.
Year: 2018
Publisher: New York: Simon & Schuster
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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