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Omer Bartov Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University. Professor Bartov is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide. He is the author of six books and the editor of three volumes; his work has been translated into several languages. His most recent book, The "Jew" in Cinema: From the Golem to Don't Touch My Holocaust (2005), is an analysis of the role of stereotypes in the representation of Jews in European, American, and Israeli films. During 2002-2003 Bartov was on leave at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, where he conducted research on the history of interethnic relations and violence in the East Galician town of Buczacz. This research was continued with a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship during 2003-2004. BiographyBorn in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony's College, Oxford, Omer Bartov began his scholarly work with research on the Nazi indoctrination of the German Wehrmacht under the Third Reich and the crimes it committed during the war in the Soviet Union. This was the main concern of his first two books, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945, and Hitler's Army. He then went on study the links between World War I and the genocidal policies of World War II, as well as the complex relationship between violence, representation, and identity in the twentieth century. His books Murder in Our Midst, Mirrors of Destruction, and Germany's War and the Holocaust, have all been preoccupied with various aspects of these questions. Bartov's interest in representation also culminated in his recent monograph, The "Jew" in Cinema, which examines the recycling of antisemitic stereotypes in European, American, and Israeli films. His forthcoming book, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, indicates the new direction of his research on interethnic relations in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. The framework for this research was created in the multiyear collaborative project led by Bartov at the Watson Institute for International Studies, titled "Borderlands: Ethnicity, Identity, and Violence in the Shatter-Zone of Empires since 1848." The closing conference of the project will take place at Marburg University in May 2007. Bartov is currently pursuing his research as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
InterestsI am currently researching a project provisionally entitled: "The Microhistory of Genocide: Interethnic Relations and the Origins of the Holocaust in Buczacz, Ukraine." My goal is to trace the origins of local mass murder in the complexities of relations between different ethnic and religious groups over a long time span in the Eastern Galician town of Buczacz. I will investigate the dynamic that creates, or prevents, the transformation of a community based on interaction and cooperation into a community of genocide. Composed of a mixed Jewish-Polish-Ukrainian population for centuries, Buczacz saw the eradication of its Jewish inhabitants by Nazi murder squads assisted by local collaborators in World War II, and the ethnic cleansing of its Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists. The main outlines of the Holocaust in East Galicia have recently been reconstructed. But we know very little about how genocide actually unfolded on the ground, and about the nature of the social fabric upon which these policies were enacted and to which it reacted. This can be better understood only by delving deeper into the past and providing the perspective of all groups involved in the event.
DegreesBA, D.Phil.
Awards
AffiliationsGerman Studies Association
American Historical Association
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Holocaust Educational Foundation
TeachingUndergraduate lecture course: "Germany 1806-1914"
Undergraduate lecture course: "Germany from 1914 to the Present"
Undergraduate lecture course: "Modern Genocide and Other Crimes against Humanity"
Freshmen Seminar: "The Holocaust in Historical Perspective"
Undergraduate seminar: "Image, Fiction, Stereotype: Germans and Jews in Film and Literature" (co-teach with German)
Undergraduate seminar: "War, Culture, and Society: The Emergence and Decline of Total War"
Graduate reading semimar: "Interpretations of History: Modern Germany"
Graduate research seminar: "Varieties of Violence in Modern Europe"
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