If the history of the Holocaust is global, then how can it be regional? And if the Holocaust was an event above all of east European history, then why must we refer to global trends? In Hitler's own understanding of the world, the planetary and the regional were linked in a particularly significant way. He believed that Jewish power shaped the planet, that the global order of empires must be altered for Germany, and that the place to weaken both Jewish power and break an empire was eastern Europe. The worldview was grotesque, and could only be realized in a certain region, or space, where the nature of the political was fundamentally altered. In the lands that Hitler foresaw as a the future German colony (the western Soviet Union) and in the land between (Poland), state institutions were destroyed. These special circumstances permitted the learning and the experimentation that created the techniques of the Final Solution.

Thus a certain understanding of the planet led to a focus on a certain region, and the treatment of that region as a special sort of place, where politics were to be altered fundamentally, created the practical conditions for the mass murder of the Jews.

Prof. Timothy Snyder, Historiker, ist Professor für Geschichte an der Yale University, New Haven sowie Gastwissenschaftler am Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Wien.

Deutscher Kommentar von PD Dr. Johannes Hürter, Historiker am Institut für Zeitgeschichte München

Moderation: Dr. Ulrike Jureit; die Historikerin ist als Gastwissenschaftlerin der Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur am Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung.

Öffentlicher Eröffnungsvortrag der nicht-öffentlichen Tagung "Leerer Raum. Raumbilder, Ordnungswille und Gewaltmobilisierung", 13. bis 15. Februar 2014 im Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung.

20 Uhr (Einlass ab 19.30 Uhr)

Quelle: www.his-online.de