Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust

The newly published issue of Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity (Vol. 39, No. 3, 2011) features a Special Section: Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust. Three brilliant articles by leading scholars in the field -

Marco Carynnyk, "Foes of our rebirth: Ukrainian nationalist discussions about Jews, 1929-1947"

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, came into being in 1929 as an “integral nationalist” movement that set itself the goal of driving Polish landowners and officials out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, joining hands with Ukrainians in other countries, and establishing an independent state. The OUN defined Jews, along with Russians and Poles, as aliens and enemies. There was no need, wrote an OUN ideologist in 1929, to list all the injuries that Jews caused Ukrainians. “In addition to a number of external enemies Ukraine also has an internal enemy … Jewry and its negative consequences for our liberation http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcause can be liquidated only by an organized collective effort”. The article examines archival documents, publications by OUN members, and recent scholarly literature to trace the evolution of OUN thinking about Jews from 1929 through the war years, when the German occupation of Ukraine gave the OUN an opportunity to stage pogroms and persecute Jews, and the prime minister of the state that the OUN proclaimed wrote that he supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine”.

John-Paul Himka, "Debates in Ukraine over nationalist involvement in the Holocaust, 2004-2008"

The article concerns debate about the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine. It covers the period 2004-2008.

Aleksandr Burakovskiy, "Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine: memorialization of the Jewish tragedy at Babi Yar"

At the core of the debate in Ukraine about Babi Yar lies the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1943 1.5 million Jews perished in Ukraine, yet a full understanding of that tragedy has been suppressed consistently by ideologies and interpretations of history that minimize or ignore this tragedy. For Soviet ideologues, admitting to the existence of the Holocaust would have been against the tenet of a “Soviet people” and the aggressive strategy of eliminating national and religious identities. A similar logic of oneness is being applied now in the ideological formation of an independent Ukraine. However, rather than one Soviet people, now there is one Ukrainian people under which numerous historical tragedies are being subsumed, and the unique national tragedies of other peoples on the territory of Ukraine, such as the massive destruction of Jews, is again being suppressed. According to this political idea assiduously advocated most recently during the Yushchenko presidency, the twentieth century in Ukraine was a battle for liberation. Within this new, exclusive history, the Holocaust, again, has found no real place. The author reviews the complicated history regarding the memorialization of the Jewish tragedy in Babi Yar through three broad chronological periods: 1943-1960, 1961-1991, and 1992-2009.

CfP: Patterns of Prejudice - Special Double Issue on Music and the Other

A special double issue of Patterns of Prejudice on music and the Other

I will guest edit a special double issue of the journal Patterns of Prejudice on the role of music in the demonization of the Other, to be published at the beginning of 2013.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, music has played an increasingly prominent role in constructing national identities and promoting various types of nationalist projects. Some of these projects turned to (largely re-invented) musical folk traditions as evidence of the rootedness and longevity of their nations. Later, music was often employed to show the grandeur of nation-states and empires. With the rise of illiberal nationalisms, many composers and performers contributed to the formation of ‘closed’, exclusivist concepts of national identity.

However, no matter how deeply involved particular composers or musicians might be in promoting illiberal social, cultural or political projects, music cannot, as such, be regarded as nationalist, racist or xenophobic. The racist or nationalist associations of a piece of music might arise from the lyrics that accompany it, but often are constructed from without, from the larger social, historical, political or cultural context. For example, the reasons why ‘Giovinezza’ is banned in Italy or Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is rarely heard in Israel do not have much to do with the music itself, but rather with the memories these works evoke, the historical or cultural baggage they bring with them. The majority of punk fans don’t listen to the songs of Skrewdriver or Macht und Ehre, not because they are ‘bad’ punk rock but because the band members are racist.

This special issue will feature original research articles focusing on historical and contemporary instances of intersection of music and nationalism. We are particularly interested in contributions that address the following issues:

* musical works as lieux de memoires
* appropriation of folk music in nationalist narratives
* music and racial or ethnic conflict
* the role of music in the demonization or stigmatization of ethnic, racial or national communities
* xenophobic tendencies in contemporary musical genres such as Punk, Industrial, Hip-Hop, Neo-Folk, Dark Ambient, Black Metal and others
* the use of music by historical and contemporary far right movements, organizations and parties

Proposals for articles (500 words) addressing these and related issues should be submitted by e-mail before 15 June 2011. All final contributions must be the original work of the author/s; they will be subject to peer review and the editors’ decisions will be final. Please send proposals to Anton Shekhovtsov (anton.shekhovtsov@gmail.com) and Barbara Rosenbaum (b.rosenbaum@dsl.pipex.com).

Searchlight: Nazis hope to register a party

Searchlight's May 2011 edition features my short article:

"Nazis hope to register a party", Searchlight (May 2011), p. 26.

My previous contributions to Searchlight:

- "Extreme-right party makes major election gains", Searchlight (December 2010), p. 25.
- "New leader calls for nationalist rejuvenation", Searchlight (February 2011), pp. 26-27.

CfP: Populist Racism in Britain and Europe since 1945

Populist Racism in Britain and Europe since 1945

An International Conference
Thursday, 22 Sept. and Friday 23 Sept. 2011, Park Campus, University of Northampton

The Radicalism and New Media research group at the University of Northampton will host a two-day international conference called "Populist Racism in Britain and Europe since 1945". Following an established tradition, this conference will bring together scholars, practitioners and third sector professionals, engaged in ground-breaking research on the causes, nature and effect of populist racism, or who are seeking to provide a practical response to a vast array of concerns associated with its impact. With the rapid rise of populist racism penetrating the political, social, and cultural spheres, as well as the mass media, a burst of studies on this cannot have come at a more apposite time. However, the scholarly works in general – to practitioners’ and officials’ disappointment – often fall behind the developmental trajectories of populist racism, sometimes due to the lag-time between writing and actual print publication of innovative research. The agenda behind the International Conference "Populist Racism in Britain and Europe since 1945" is exactly to reduce the lag time between undertaking research and disseminating important findings, so these have a timely impact on practice. At the same time scholars of populist racism will have an opportunity to engage in a much needed, dynamic dialogue with practitioners, which will allow academics align their research priorities. The conference will therefore provide a combination of theoretical and empirical studies on populist racism by established and young scholars, as well as papers and reports from practitioners and civil servants.

Day 1: Populist Racism across Europe
Day 1 will be country- and region-oriented, and feature four panels.
Panel 1 – Western Europe
Panel 2 – Northern Europe
Panel 3 – Central and Eastern Europe
Panel 4 – Southern Europe

Day 2: Populist Racism in Britain
Day 2 of the conference will focus on populist racism in Britain and will be case-oriented.
Themes:
– Comparative and/or historical analysis of British racist populism
– Prejudice against Travellers, immigrants and asylum-seekers
– The ever-changing face of anti-Semitism
– Religion is the new colour? The rise of Islamophobia
– Racism in the mass media, and cultural production
– Populist racism and crime
– English Defence League: from anti-extremist protests to a racist street army
– British National Party: ‘common sense’, ‘racial realism’, or plain racism?
– ‘Traditional’ vs. ‘non-traditional’ immigrants: tensions among minority groups

Keynote addresses: Dr Hans-Georg Betz and others to be confirmed.

Conference cost is £65 for 1 day, £120 for both, including conference dinner in town on 22 September.

To participate, please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words by 30 June 2011 to conference organisers:

Dr Mathew Feldman, matthew.feldman@northampton.ac.uk
Dr Paul Jackson, paul.jackson@northampton.ac.uk
Dr Anton Shekhovtsov, anton.shekhovtsov@northampton.ac.uk

International Scholars Issue Open Letter

International Scholars Issue Open Letter on the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

The following historic letter, signed by over 100 scholars from around the world, many of them leaders in their fields, is being circulated across Europe and through international scholarly associations and listservs. It will no doubt include many more scholars and their names will be added as they are submitted.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress have been campaigning against the plans of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg to mount a permanent Holocaust gallery. The UCCLA has mailed out a postcard across Canada that reproduces the cover of an edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and implies that supporters of a Holocaust gallery are pigs. For its part, the UCC, which, in contrast to the UCCLA, is an elected body that represents major Ukrainian Canadian organizations, has complained that the planned Holocaust exhibit is “unacceptable” and has asked the Museum to provide the Holodomor, or Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, “no less coverage… than the Holocaust.”

We, the signatories to this letter, have all studied various aspects of genocide, fascism, antisemitism, Stalinism, war criminality, the Holodomor, and the Holocaust. We unequivocally recognize that the violence and oppression that Ukraine has experienced during its multi-totalitarian past ought to be remembered and commemorated in a Canadian museum devoted to the history and abuse of human rights. What we object to is the dishonest manner in which the UCCLA and UCC have distorted historical accounts of the Holodomor while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the Ukrainian nationalist movement’s role in the Holocaust.

The Ukrainian famine, which constitutes one of Stalin’s great crimes and one of Europe’s most devastating tragedies, deserves a place in any venue dedicated to commemorating and understanding the violation of human rights. Yet the way the UCC treats the Holodomor is problematic. All demographic studies place the number of famine deaths in Soviet Ukraine in the range of 2.6 to 3.9 million. This is, in itself, a grievous toll. Nonetheless, the UCC has, at times, inflated the number of victims to seven or even ten million. The implication is obvious: seven or ten million is more than six million; the Holodomor deserves more attention than the Holocaust. Such a manipulative attempt to exploit human suffering is reprehensible and should not be acceptable to the Canadian public.

We are also troubled by the attitude of the UCCLA and UCC toward the OUN, the UPA, and the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia’ (1st Ukrainian). OUN stands for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. UPA is the Ukrainian abbreviation for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the armed branch of the OUN. The Galicia Division, a military unit that was primarily involved in counterinsurgency activities, was established by the Germans in 1943. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians who belonged to these formations perished while resisting the ruthless imposition of Soviet power at the end of the war. Today many Ukrainians revere the members of these organizations as the champions of an oppressed people. In February 2010, the UCC called on the Canadian government “to make changes to Canada’s War Veterans Allowance Act by expanding eligibility to include designated resistance groups such as OUN-UPA.” Last Remembrance Day, the UCC asked Ukrainian Canadians to honour veterans who belonged to OUN, UPA, and the Galicia Division.

In their calls to honour the members of these organizations as veterans, what the UCCLA and the UCC do not fully acknowledge is that all three groups have been implicated in violence against civilians on a massive scale. Significant historical research indicates the political responsibility of the OUN in anti-Jewish violence in the summer of 1941. Emerging research also demonstrates that many former policemen who aided the Nazis in genocidal operations subsequently joined the UPA, created in early 1943. Moreover, the UPA murdered tens of thousands of civilian Poles in the western province of Volhynia to undercut the ability of postwar Poland to make claims on the area. The Galicia Division was also involved in anti-civilian military actions, although mainly outside of Ukraine.

By pointing out the historical record of the OUN, UPA, and the Galicia Division, we do not mean to suggest some sort of collective responsibility for genocide on the part of all the men and women who served in them, and certainly not on the part of all Ukrainians. Nevertheless, in an age when the mass murder of civilians is regarded as a crime against humanity, the mixed record of these organizations has to be openly debated, particularly when the significance of the Holocaust is being questioned in a public campaign pertaining to a fair representation of the history of human rights.

We therefore assert that since the UCCLA and UCC have not understood that confronting the historical record openly and honestly is preferable to manipulative falsehood, have engaged in a competition of suffering, and have failed to acknowledge both the vices and the virtues of the nationalist movement, they ought to stay out of a debate about the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

Signatories:

Tarik Cyril Amar, Assistant Professor of History, Columbia University

Christine Achinger, Assistant Professor of German Studies, University of Warwick

Alexander Babyonyshev, Davis Center, Harvard University

Alejandro Baer, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Bayreuth & Department of Social Anthropology, Universidad Complutense Madrid

Karyn Ball, Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies, Brown University

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University

Delphine Bechtel, Associate Professor for Central European Studies, University Paris IV Sorbonne

Elissa Bemporad, Jerry and William Ungar Assistant Professor, Department of History, Queens College, City University of New York

Paul Bogdanor, Independent Scholar, London

Richard Breitman, Professor of History, American University

Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Aleksandr Burakovskiy, Independent Scholar, Clifton, NJ

Marco Carynnyk, Writer and Independent Scholar, Toronto

David Cesarani, Research Professor in History, Royal Holloway, University of London

Catherine Chatterley, Founding Director, Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA); SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Manitoba

Paul A. Chilton, Professor Emeritus, Lancaster University

Brian K. Daley, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Alberta

Johan Dietsch, Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Languages and Literature, University of Lund

Karin Doerr, Professor, Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics, Concordia U

Roman Dubasevych, Ph. D. Candidate, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald

Eirik Eiglad, Editor, New Compass Press, Norway

Gary Evans, Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, University of Ottawa

Richard J. Evans, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge

Robert Fine, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick

David Fraser, Professor of Law and Social Theory, University of Nottingham

Christian Ganzer, Deutsche Akademische Austauch Dienst Lecturer, National Pedagogical Drahomanov University, Kyiv

Norman J.W. Goda, Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Florida

Frank Golczewski, Professor, Historisches Seminar der Universität Hamburg

Nora Gold, Associate Scholar, Centre for Women’s Studies in Education, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education and University of Toronto

Chad Alan Goldberg, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin

Brian Goldfarb, Principal Lecturer in Sociology, De Montfort University

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Independent Scholar, Boston

Alain Goldschlager, Professor of French Literature, University of Western Ontario; Chairman, National Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research

Andrew Gow, Professor, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

Lisa Grekul, Associate Professor, Department of Critical Studies, University of British Columbia

Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Cooper Union College, NY

Bella Gutterman, Director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem

Bernard Harrison, E.E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah

Steven Haberman, Director and Deputy Dean, Professor of Actuarial Science, Cass Business School, City University, London

Guido Hausmann, Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Jena

Jeffrey Herf, Professor of Modern European History, Department of History, University of Maryland

John-Paul Himka, Professor, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

David Hirsh, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Sara R. Horowitz, Professor, Humanities, York University

Pavel Ilyin, Geography Consultant, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Marion Kaplan, Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History, NYU

Dovid Katz, Editor, Defendinghistory.com, Chief Analyst, Litvak Studies Institute, Professor emeritus, Vilnius University

Steven T. Katz, Professor & Director of the Elie Wiesel Centre for Judaic Studies, Boston University

Sir Ian Kershaw, Professor of Modern History, University of Sheffield

C. Richard King, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University at Pullman

Myrna Kostash, Writer, Edmonton

Matthew Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosphy, University of Cambridge

Frederick Krantz, Professor, Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Director, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Montréal

Matthias Küntzel, Research Associate, Vidal Sassoon Centre for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University

Taras Kurylo, Independent Scholar, Edmonton

Marija Kropuves-Berg, Ph.D., Bloomington, IN

Alexandr Kruglov, Associate Professor, Chair of Philosophy, Kharkiv University of Radio Electronics

Francis Landy, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Dartmouth College

Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies, Emory University

Meir Litvak, Director, Center for Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University

Wendy Lower, Research Fellow, Department of History, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich

Andrei S. Markovits, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies, University of Michigan

David Matas, Human rights lawyer, Order of Canada, Winnipeg

Jared McBride, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, UCLA

Maureen McNeil, Professor, Lancaster University

Oleksandr Melnyk, Ph. D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Toronto

Erin Moure, Poet and essayist, Montréal

Eduard Nižňanský, Professor, Department of Universal History, Commenius University

Nina Paulovicova, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

Srdja Pavlovic, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta

Dina Porat, Head, Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, Tel Aviv University

Moishe Postone, Professor, Department of History, Center for Jewish Studies, Co-Director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, University of Chicago

Alexander V. Prusin, Associate Professor of History, Humanities Department, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Doron Rabinovici, Historian, Vienna

Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sub-Dean for Graduate Studies, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent

John E. Richardson, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University

William Risch, Associate Professor of History, Georgia College

Andrew Roberts, Historian, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Director, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University

Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Hamburg, and Research Fellow at the Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Vienna

Robert Rozett, Director of Libraries, Yad Vashem

Per A. Rudling, Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of History, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald

Clemens Ruthner, Assistant Professor of European Studies, Trinity College, Dublin

Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Paris

Anna Sommer Schneider, Ph. D. Candidate, Jagiellonian University, and Research Assistant, Emory University

Guy Sela, Ph. D. Candidate, University of Oxford

David M. Seymour, School of Law, Lancaster University

Anton Shekhovtsov, Kreisau Fellow of the George Bell Institute, Sevastopol

Ivan Sloboda, Translator, London

David Silberklang, Senior Historian and Editor of Yad Vashem Studies, Yad Vashem; Lecturer in Jewish History, Hebrew University

Charles Small, Director, Interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Yale University

Peter Stachel, Post-doctoral Fellow, Institute for Culture Studies and History of Theatre, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Lionel Steiman, Senior Scholar & Professor of History, University of Manitoba

Daniel Stone, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Winnipeg

Terri Tomsky, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Albertahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Marin Turk, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan

Rafał Wnuk, Professor, Department of History, Catholic University of Lublin

Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor, Chair in Discourse Studies, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University

Efraim Zuroff, Director of Nazi War Crimes Research, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Israel

See also: "Discord, accusations taint human rights museum debate", by James Adams.

Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies

Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies

Goal and target group
Fascism is an internationally oriented English-language Open Access e-journal that seeks to provide the burgeoning international field of research into fascism and extremism with a forum that is not restricted by national borders, nor by expertise. It is directed towards a wide audience of interested fellow specialists, geared towards informing policy-makers and social workers, and to engage students. Fascism is peer reviewed.

Frequency
Fascism will be published twice a year, in March and September. The first issue will be published in September 2011. Each issue will contain 4 to 5 articles and consists of approximately 125 pages.

Editorial Office
Chief editor: Dr Madelon de Keizer (NIOD)
Consultant editor: Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Managing editor: Marjo Bakker (NIOD)

Editorial board
- Remieg Aerts
- Mark Antliff
- Emily Braun
- Stefan Breuer
- Francesco Cassata
- Nigel Copsey
- Bruno De Wever
- Ruth Ben-Ghiat
- Constantin Iordachi
- Aristotle Kallis
- Wim van Meurs
- Sven Reichardt
- Peter Romijn
- Marjan Schwegman
- Anton Shekhovtsov
- James Shields
- Zeev Sternhell
- Andreas Umland

Information for authors
Article, abstract and keywords
Each article is written in English, consists of approximately 8000 words and should include an abstract and keywords. Abstracts should be no more than 150 words, written in English, which clearly defines the article’s thesis. Keywords are a list of three to eight words that classify the article. Keywords can include names of historical actors, places, sources used, concepts, or any other term that would be useful in electronic searches for the article.

Copyright
The copyright of the articles will stay with the author(s). Authors are recommend to use the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. With this license the licensor (the author(s)) ‘permits others to copy, distribute, display and perform the work, as well as make derivative works based on it’, except for commercial use.
The rights to the title of the journal will equally be shared by the NIOD and Brill.

Automated submission
The publisher deploys the online article submission system Editorial Manager (Aries Systems Corporation, USA). This system allows candidate authors to submit their article to the journal, and manages all subsequent steps like selection, peer review, adjustments and formal acceptance. The system reports on progress of each step of the article flow to the authors, the managing editor and the production editor. More information on how to submit your contribution will follow.

Platform/Hosting
The Journal will be hosted at the publisher’s section on the platform of IngentaConnect and on the publisher’s branded version of that platform.

CfA: Kreisau-Fellows of the George Bell Institute

Call for Applications

Fellowship Program of the George Bell Institute (Chichester, UK), Kreisau Foundation for Mutual Understanding (Krzyżowa, PL), supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Stuttgart, DE)

The Kreisau-Fellows of the George Bell Institute

The Kreisau Fellows of the George Bell Institute are a network of writers, scholars, researchers and artists from Central and Eastern Europe. The Fellowship promotes difference and diversity as essential to the creative ties between generations and minds in the pursuit of understanding and justice. The Kreisau Fellows are dedicated to providing a broader context for ideas and projects based on the perception of the individual as the driving force of social and cultural change.

Deadline: January 15th, 2011

'For us post-war Europe is less a question of frontiers and soldiers, of top-heavy organisations and grandiose plans, than the question as to how the image of man can be re-established in the hearts of our fellow citizens.' Helmuth James von Moltke, 1942

'I insist, once again, on the significance of persons.' George Bell, 1943

'Never forget your humanity, and respect human dignity in your dealings with others.' Robert Bosch

Profile of the Kreisau Fellows:

Helmuth James von Moltke and his friends shared with their British ally George Bell a profound belief in the vision of the individual. They saw that the prospects of civilization itself could depend upon men and women whose creative convictions might present an alternative to accepted conventions and established institutions. Moreover, both Moltke and Bell affirmed the fundamental importance of circles of friendship which might reach across boundaries of any kind to sustain creative life and thought. Robert Bosch, too, saw that such ideals must be maintained in the conditions of everyday life and he sought to advance them in the broad context of his own work. Accordingly, the moral worlds of the lawyer, the bishop and the entrepreneur shared a striking courage, conviction and eloquence in response to the dangers of dictatorship and war.

Accordingly we are looking for candidates who possess a creative commitment which responds to the distinctive spirit which was shown by Bell, Bosch and Moltke:

1. The Kreisau Fellows are individuals with excellent intellectual achievements to their names within the humanities and the fields of natural and social sciences. More specifically they may be engaged in working in such diverse disciplines as translation, literature, physics, medicine, theatre, art, music and acting. What unites them is a vision that is both distinctive and creative, a shared commitment to their own societies and a belief in the forging of international relationships.

2. A Kreisau Fellowship enables a candidate to either realize or continue his/her professional goals in his/her own country while at the same time bringing them into an international community. The Fellowship ensures a relative independence from the existing socio-economic and political conditions and provides a (sympathetic) lasting international framework in which their commitments are recognised, encouraged and promoted. The scholarship is not paid in monthly rates, but is attached to specific projects or research costs.

3. The Fellows are expected to contribute to the international programme of the Kreisau Foundation and to spend their sabbatical in Kreisau within the first two years after receiving the financial support.

4. The candidates should come from CEE countries.

5. The communication language of the programme is English.

Selection criteria:
- A completed arts or academic degree and some work experience. The Fellowship Network aims at a mix of people of different ages.
- A willingness to participate in the international network in the period of financial support as well as beyond that specified period.
- An interest in and willingness to conduct part of the proposed project in Kreisau itself (for example in the form of a sabbatical) and a commitment to contribute to the programme locally.

Selection procedure:
- Candidates can apply or be proposed by the partners of the Kreisau Fellowships Programme (Robert Bosch Stiftung, George Bell Institute, Kreisau Foundation) and by current Fellows.
- Candidates will be selected by the Selection Committee 2 times a year (June 30, January 31).
- The Selection Committee consists of representatives of the Kreisau Foundation, the George Bell Institute and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
- The selection of a candidate is conducted in three stages:

First stage: Documents are submitted (a CV, a project proposal, which is to be realized through participation in the network).

Second stage: A trustee of the George Bell Institute, Kreisau Foundation or Robert Bosch Stiftung is asked to give an expertise/recommendation/reference of selected candidate.

Third stage: The candidate will have an interview with a representative of the Selection Committee.

Financial support
Fellows will be granted up to 5.000 Euro a year for their arts and research projects (research trip, conferences), books and other materials; 800 Euro for travelling expenses to Krzyżowa and spend a sabbatical (1 month) in Krzyżowa.

Please submit your application (CV and Motivation Letter including a project description, which you would like to realize within the network) via mail until January 15th, 2011 to Elżbieta Opiłowska.