The Holocaust History Podcast
The Holocaust History Podcast features engaging conversations with a diverse group of guests on all elements of the Holocaust. Whether you are new to the topic or come with prior knowledge, you will learn something new.
Episodes
27 episodes since 2023
Ep. Josef Mengele with David Marwell
Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death, has achieved an almost mythical status as a supervillain. Yet this stereotype obscures the history of a man who was, in many ways, a product of both pre-war racial pseudoscience and the Naz...
September 16, 2024
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1:31:19
Ep. 25- The Holocaust and the German Genocide in Namibia with Jürgen Zimmerer
Was the Holocaust a unique event or did it have its roots in earlier historical events? How do we put earlier colonial genocides in context and conversation with the Holocaust? On this episode, we talk about the connections between ...
September 09, 2024
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Episode 25
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1:11:10
Ep. 24- The Counterfeit Countess with Joanna Sliwa and Elizabeth White
The story of Countess Janina (Mehlberg) Suchodolska is something that would be rejected by Hollywood as too far-fetched, but it is a true story. Janina was a Jewish Pole hiding in plain sight as a Polish noblewoman who then went on ...
September 02, 2024
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Episode 24
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1:20:20
Ep. 23- The Genocide of Soviet POWs with Dallas Michelbacher
The second largest Nazi victim group after the Jews was Soviet POWs. The experience of these people has been documented in part by the latest volume of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos
June 24, 2024
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Episode 23
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1:31:27
Ep. 22- Nazi Perpetrators and Disgust with Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic
How did Holocaust perpetrators feel about what they did and how were they able to keep doing it? The question of perpetrator motivation has been one that scholars of the Holocaust have been interested in from the beginning.But what...
June 17, 2024
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Episode 22
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1:31:19
Ep. 21- The Zone of Interest with Barry Langford
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023) is a haunting film focused on the domestic life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family. The family lived in ...
June 10, 2024
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Episode 21
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1:29:54
Ep. 20- Polish Jewish Relations in the Holocaust with Jan Grabowski
The story of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust is an incredibly complex and difficult one. On the one hand, Poles and Jews both suffered horribly under the Nazis. On the other, however, the general climate in Poland was i...
June 03, 2024
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Episode 20
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1:05:43
Ep. 19- The Jasenovac Camp with Stipe Odak
Somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Jews, Roma, and ethnic Serbs were murdered in the Jasenovac concentration camp in what is now Croatian. This camp was run by Croatians without Nazi involvement. Yet few outside of the Balkans hav...
May 27, 2024
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Episode 19
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1:24:36
Ep. 18- Treblinka with Chad Gibbs
The Treblinka extermination center was responsible for the murder of approximately 925,000 Jews during the Holocaust. It was the deadliest killing site after Auschwitz. Yet few people know that it was also the scene of a successful ...
May 20, 2024
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Episode 18
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1:35:48
Ep. 17: The Kindertransport with Amy Williams
From the earliest days of the Third Reich through the end of the war, there were organized efforts to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis. Perhaps as many as 10,000 were rescued in this way, but without their parents. They ended u...
May 13, 2024
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Episode 17
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1:37:29
Ep. 16: Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust with Jason Lantzer
General Dwight Eisenhower’s visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp in April 1945 fundamentally changed his outlook on the war and on his enemy, the Nazis. It also changed the way he carried out his duties later as US Military Governor in...
May 06, 2024
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Episode 16
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1:24:58
Ep. 15: Holocaust Education with Irene Ann Resenly
We talk a lot about learning from the Holocaust and lessons from the Holocaust, but we don’t talk nearly enough about HOW to TEACH the Holocaust. Understanding how to present this complex and often difficult material to students at a vari...
April 29, 2024
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Episode 15
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1:18:53
Ep. 14: The Romani Experience during the Holocaust with Ari Joskowicz
Some historians have argued that the experience of Romani people during the Holocaust most closely approximated that of the Jews in terms of policy and execution. Of course, there were also important differences. But, Jews and Roman...
April 22, 2024
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Episode 14
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1:34:31
Ep. 13: Drunk on Genocide: Nazi Perpetrators, Alcohol, and Violence with Ed Westermann
What motivated Nazi perpetrators? How do we explain the apparent ease with which so many Germans carried out acts of extreme violence? These are some of the most enduring questions raised by the Holocaust. And the...
April 15, 2024
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Episode 13
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1:17:31
Ep. 12: The Auschwitz Jewish Center and Holocaust Education in Poland with Tomek Kuncewicz and Maciek Zabierowski
This episode covers a lot of ground with my guests from the Auschwitz Jewish Center, Tomek Kuncewicz and Maciek Zabierowski. We talk about the history of the Jewish community in Oświęcim, Poland as well as the challenges of educating the ...
April 08, 2024
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Episode 12
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1:22:46
Ep. 11: Hunger and Starvation in Ghettos with Helene Sinnreich
The Nazis pursued a variety of strategies in their attempts to murder all the Jews of Europe. One of these was starvation, particularly within ghettos where they could control the flow of food to captive populations.In this episode...
April 01, 2024
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Episode 11
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1:22:17
Ep. 10: Why We Fight- The Band of Brothers Holocaust Episode with John Orloff and Ross McCall
It’s been over 20 years since the HBO television series Band of Brothers appeared, but it continues to shape the popular understanding and conception of World War II. The series is full of powerful episodes but one that viewers consistent...
March 25, 2024
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Episode 10
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1:32:12
Ep. 9: The Persecution of Transgender and Gay Communities during the Holocaust with Laurie Marhoefer.
The Nazi state was built on persecution and multiple groups in addition to Jews were victimized and killed during the Holocaust. Today’s podcast looks not only at Nazi persecution of gay and transgender people along with Nazi homophobic t...
March 18, 2024
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Episode 9
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1:36:33
Ep. 8: Topf and Sons- The Family Who Engineered the Holocaust with Karen Bartlett
The story of the Topf brothers is one of the most chilling examples of corporate complicity in the Holocaust. Topf and Sons was the company who designed, built, and installed the ovens used to bur...
March 11, 2024
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Episode 8
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1:11:23
Ep. 7: Holocaust Survivors in the US Military with Mike Rugel
Did you know that a Holocaust survivor who served in the US Army in the Korean War won the Congressional Medal Of Honor? Did you know that there were thousands of Holocaust survivors who fought th...
March 04, 2024
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Episode 7
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57:20
Ep. 6: Holocaust Archaeology with Caroline Sturdy-Colls
How do we uncover new evidence about the Holocaust? In this podcast episode, we look at the fascinating topic of Holocaust archaeology. Our guest, Professor Caroline Sturdy-Colls has investigated over 50 Holocaust sites including th...
February 26, 2024
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Episode 6
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1:21:36
Ep. 5: The Sobibor camp photo album with Martin Cüppers
The Nazis murdered at least 167,000 Jews in the small extermination center of Sobibor located today in far-eastern Poland on the border with Ukraine. In 2020, an album belonging to the Deputy Comm...
February 19, 2024
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Episode 5
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1:04:38
Ep. 4: America's Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust with Rebecca Erbelding
What did the US do to rescue Jews from the clutches of the Nazis? This week we talk with Rebecca Erbelding about the War Refugee Board and American efforts to help those targe...
February 12, 2024
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Episode 4
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1:13:37
Ep. 3: The Fourth Reich with Gavriel Rosenfeld
How do you write the history of something that never happened? What were the chances of Nazis creating a Fourth Reich? And what do our fears of a Nazi resurgence tell us about the past and present. In this wide-ra...
February 05, 2024
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Episode 3
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1:08:46
Ep. 2: Romania and the Holocaust with Grant Harward
Approximately 220,000 Romanian Jews died during the Holocaust, but their story is much less well-known. In this conversation with Grant Harward, we talk about the history of the Holocaust in Romania. He leads us through a really inf...
January 29, 2024
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Episode 2
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1:12:10