Remembering bombed cities - Competing narratives and transnational perspectives
In 2015, Rotterdam remembers the 75th anniversary of the bombing of its city center. The Nazi bombing of Rotterdam on May 14th 1940 forced the Dutch to surrender, after which five years of occupation began.
Dr. Susan Hogervorst and Dr. Patricia van Ulzen studied the public memory of the Rotterdam bombing within the context of the (trans)national memory culture of WWII. Their book "Rotterdam en het bombardement – 75 jaar herinneren en vergeten" (May 2015) about processes of remembering and forgetting this historical event is the first Dutch monograph on this subject. In June 2015 NIOD scholar Dr. Bas von Benda Beckmann published his new book "German historians and the bombing of German cities", based on his Ph.D.-research on the German historiography of the Allied bombings.
This symposium intends to bring together experts from the Netherlands and abroad to discuss the results of the two recent publications within a wider European context. The aim is to explore and compare different narratives and interpretations about bombed cities within the dynamic WWII memory cultures.
Conference Venue: NIOD Institute for War Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Herengracht 380, 1016 CJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Registration via: aanmelden@niod.knaw.nl
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Program:
10.00 Welcome
10.15 Keynote - Prof. Dr. Neil Gregor (University of Southampton): Remembering the Bombing, Remembering the City
11.20 Dr. Jörg Arnold (University of Nottingham): “So starb meine Heimatstadt" - Allied Bombing and Urban Memory in Germany, 1940 to the present
11.40 Dr. Johanna M. Blokker (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg): Photography and Memory in German Cities after 1945
12.20 Lunch
13.00 Dr. Bas Von Benda-Beckmann (NIOD): Auschwitz vs. Dresden? The absence and presence of the Holocaust in German historical accounts on the Allied bombings
13.20 Dr. Susan Hogervorst (Open Universiteit): “Struck in the heart of the community”. Local commemoration of the Rotterdam bombing vs. (trans)national Holocaust memory
14.20 Dr. Rob van Ginkel (Universiteit van Amsterdam): Collateral Damage and Commemorative Silence - The Belated Remembrance of Dutch Air War Victims
14.40 Dr. Patricia van Ulzen (Open Universiteit): Zadkine’s monument for the destroyed city of Rotterdam as a memory mould. Local, national and international effects of a sculpture on remembering
15.15 Closing remarks | Discussion - Prof. Dr. Kees Ribbens (NIOD/Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam)
16.00 Drinks
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Contact:
Erik Somers
NIOD Institute for War Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam
+31 20 523 38 00