Overview
Workshop dates: August 30–September 3, 2027
Co-organizer and Host: elma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the LastSeen. Images of Nazi Deportations project invite applications for the 2027 Moskowitz/Rafalowicz International Research Workshop Last Seen: Visual Histories of Deportation Across Europe. The workshop will be co-led by Alina Bothe and Christoph Kreutzmüller (Selma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies) and take place August 30–September 3, 2027, at the Selma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg of the Freie Universität Berlin.
Deportations were a key element of the Nazi-led processes of incarceration and killing in German-occupied Europe. They enabled the forced removal of the principal targets of Nazi racial ideology—Jews, Roma and Sinti, and people with disabilities—from their homes and communities across Europe. Within the German Reich, deportations took place publicly starting in 1938, in the middle of towns and cities, often in broad daylight. Many deportations were photographed, most frequently by the police, but also by amateur photographers and the persecuted themselves. These images document not only the experiences of those subjected to deportation but also the involvement of a wide range of actors, from the police and other authorities to the nurses, bus drivers, and other personnel whose work helped make deportations possible.
This workshop builds on LastSeen. Images of Nazi Deportations, a research project that has collected, catalogued, and published photographs of deportations from Germany. Its digital atlas contextualizes images from a variety of locations and includes previously unknown photographs from Jewish perspectives and of major Jewish communities such as Hamburg and Breslau. Digital access to this collection has made new research possible on the visual history of the deportations from the Reich. Although deportations were a Europe-wide phenomenon, the surviving photographic documentation has rarely been examined within a comparative European framework. The workshop will extend the work of LastSeen across the continent and advance a pan-European visual history of deportation.
The expansion of the project throughout Europe raises a range of historical, conceptual, and methodological questions. What constitutes a photograph of deportation? Where does the visual history of deportation begin and end? How did the identities and intentions of photographers, the circumstances in which images were produced, and the different political and administrative contexts of persecution by the Nazis and their allies shape the photographic record? What can these images reveal about the participation of perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, and victims in the deportation process? How does comparative research illuminate regional differences and similarities, as well as the limitations and silences of the surviving visual record?
The workshop aims to foster scholarly exchange on the transnational visual history of deportations, develop avenues for comparative research, and build a network of scholars and institutions to participate in the creation of a visual database of images spanning Europe. Discussions will focus on the identification, preservation, research, and display of relevant photographic holdings; the historical interpretation of individual images and image series; and the development of comparative perspectives across European contexts.
We invite applications examining the visual history of deportations across Europe from these or related perspectives, including work on:
The diversity of perspectives from which the images were taken, including perpetrator-, amateur-, and victim-produced photos, as well as clandestine and souvenir/trophy photography
Visual evidence of local observation, participation, complicity, and collaboration
Comparative approaches to deportation photography across different European countries, regions, and regimes
The conceptual boundaries of deportation photography and its relationship to other forms of atrocity photography
Methodologies for analyzing individual photographs, image series, and photoalbums
The infrastructure and logistics of deportation depicted in photographs, and the visual documentation of different stages of the deportation process
The preservation, provenance, circulation, and afterlives of photographs of deportations, including their use as evidence in trials and their role in national memory politics
The workshop will also lay the groundwork for a proposed special journal issue, pilot studies for the project's European expansion, and the identification and documentation of relevant holdings in private possession, archives, and museums.
Participants will also have the opportunity to learn more about relevant archival resources in the Holocaust Museum's David M. Rubenstein National Institute for Holocaust Documentation.
To Apply
Applications are welcome from scholars affiliated with universities, research institutions, archives, or cultural heritage sites and in any relevant academic discipline, including but not limited to anthropology, art history, cultural studies, disability studies, history, Jewish studies, literature, philosophy, political science, religion, Romani studies, and sociology. Applications are encouraged from scholars at all levels of their careers, from Ph.D. candidates to senior faculty.
The Mandel Center will reimburse the costs of round-trip economy-class air, train, or bus tickets to and from Berlin, Germany, and related incidental expenses, up to a maximum reimbursable amount calculated by home institution location, which will be distributed within 8–12 weeks of the workshop’s conclusion. The Mandel Center will also provide hotel accommodation for the duration of the workshop and a stipend to defray participants’ incidental expenses. Participants are required to attend the full duration of the workshop and to circulate a draft paper in advance of the program.
The deadline for receipt of applications is January 5, 2027. Applications must include:
A short biography that highlights any relevant on-going research projects and/or publications
A curriculum vitae
An abstract of no more than 500 words outlining the specific project that the applicant is prepared to present during the program.
Applications must be submitted in English at via our online application.
Questions should be directed to researchworkshops@ushmm.org.
This workshop has been made possible through the generosity of the Moskowitz/Rafalowicz Endowment at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.