Uncovering the Legacy of the Holocaust in Bulgaria

Please join Columbia University in the City of New York for a virtual symposium co-convened by Harriman Institute Adjunct Assistant Professor Tanya Domi and Laura Cohen, Executive Director of the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College, CUNY.

Across Europe, the history of the Holocaust is routinely distorted for nationalist purposes by governments looking to influence interpretations of, while distancing themselves from, the atrocities committed on their soil during World War II. At the same time, evidence continues to emerge about what happened to the Jewish, as well as Roma and Sinti communities throughout Southeast Europe and the Western Balkans. This symposium offers new insights into how the Holocaust unfolded in Bulgaria, and also marks the launch of new research commissioned by the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG) and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University about the fate of Roma and Sinti people in the former Yugoslavia.

Program All times in EDT (New York). Each panel requires individual registration.

Panel I: Uncovering the Legacy of the Holocaust in Bulgaria | 9:30am–11:00am

This panel features a discussion about the documentary film, A Question of Survival: The Complex Legacy of the Holocaust in the Balkans (2020), as well as the challenges of doing research in a country where the history of the Holocaust has been mythologized, obscured, and contested.
Please note that the film will not be shown during the panel. The link to screen it in advance will be shared nine days before the event.

• Elka Nikolova, filmmaker
• Steven Sage, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum specialist on Bulgaria
• Rumyana Marinova-Christidi, Head of Hebraistika on the Faculty of History at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Bulgaria
• Moderator: Laura Cohen (Kupferberg Holocaust Center)

Register for film screening here. | Register for Zoom webinar here. | Watch panel on YouTube here.

Panel II: The Fates of the Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust in the Former Yugoslavia | 12:00pm–1:30pm

This panel marks the launch of a new research report commissioned by the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (AIPG) and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

• Matei Demetrescu, Program Officer at the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities
• Hristo Kyuchukov, Professor of Intercultural Education at the University of Silesia, Poland
• Alenka Janko Spreizer, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Primorska, Slovenia
• Hikmet Karčić, genocide and Holocaust scholar
• Margareta Matache, Instructor at Harvard University; Director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.
• Moderator: Tanya Domi (Harriman Institute)

Register for Zoom webinar here. | Watch panel on YouTube here.