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Episode 7 - Gerald Steinacher

 

In the seventh episode of "History Exchange," Gerald Steinacher discusses his journey as a historian and professor, the escape of National Socialists after the Second World War, and his time at the United States National Holocaust Memorial.

Gerald Steinacher, a native of Tyrol, Austria, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Innsbruck in 1999. After serving at the South Tyrolean Regional Archives in Bozen, he was a Joseph A. Schumpeter Research Fellow at Harvard University during 2010-2011 and a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2009.
Gerald J. Steinacher is the James A. Rawley Professor of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (USA). His research focuses on 20th-century European History with an emphasis on the Holocaust, National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and intelligence studies. He has published four books, edited ten more, and written over seventy book chapters and journal articles on these topics. Steinacher’s research has been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, and the German weekly Der Spiegel, among others.
Steinacher’s 2011 book, "Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice", examines the post-war fate of Nazis and Holocaust perpetrators, and the institutions facilitating their escape from Europe. The book was published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and has been translated into several languages. It was awarded the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. Steinacher’s most recent book, "Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust", was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. The book explores the lessons learned by the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross from its handling of the Holocaust, and the ensuing policy changes regarding genocide and victims of war.
Steinacher’s current research project, under the working title "The Pope against Nuremberg: Nazi War Crimes Trials, the Vatican and the Question of Postwar Justice", examines the attitude of the Catholic Church leadership towards Nuremberg trials and the denazification of Germany in the first post-war decade. The project analyzes church alternatives to retributive justice as a way of dealing with guilt and responsibility after World War II and the Holocaust. Steinacher is also the co-editor of the series Contemporary Holocaust Studies published with the University of Nebraska Press. The most recent volume in the series is about Antisemitism on the Rise: The 1930s and Today.
Steinacher has held many distinguished research fellowships and visiting professorships. These include fellowships at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem (Jerusalem), at the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich), and most recently, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. In 2006, he was a Visiting Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC) and has since continued to work closely with the Museum’s education and research programs.
During his time as a graduate student, Steinacher worked with Dr. Günter Bischof at the University of New Orleans. His appreciation for Dr. Bischof’s passion for history and dedication to his students has had a profound impact on Dr. Steinacher’s own philosophy towards teaching the next generation of historians. Dr. Bischof’s expansive knowledge of foreign policy in post-World War II Europe has been of immense value to Dr. Steinacher’s own field of study.
Within the interview, Dr. Steinacher provides detailed insights into what drove the Nazis to choose the routes they did to escape the crumbling regime, and what entities helped them flee and why they might have done so. The way people today view the situation differs from how it appeared then, in the fog of war. Dr. Steinacher also reflects on what history means to him personally and what led him to specialize in his specific field of study.

Interviewer:
Geoff Morrison, a native of New Orleans, is a history major at the University of New Orleans. He conducted the interview with Dr. Steinacher.
Devin Sweet, from Baltimore, Maryland, is a graduate student in the master’s degree programme at the University of New Orleans. He was responsible for coordinating, directing, and managing the timeline of the interview.
Nukhba Noor, hailing from Lahore, Pakistan, is also a history major at the University of New Orleans. She assisted in preparing the interview questions and addressing the technical aspects of the interview.