Landscapes of the Holocaust: Buried History in Eastern Europe

2026 Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture

The persecution and murder of “enemies of the state” was an open secret during the Holocaust, but the Nazis wanted to ensure they left no evidence of their mass murder. They destroyed their murder centers and attempted to burn and bury any proof linking them to their homicidal actions. However, the physical landscapes continue to act as witnesses to Nazi crimes. What can we learn about the scale of persecution and victims’ experiences by mapping these places? How can the objects buried there further complicate the history we know? Join us as two Holocaust scholars reconstitute the Holocaust’s killing fields.

Speakers
Dr. Caroline Sturdy Colls, Director, Centre of Archaeology; Professor of Holocaust Archaeology and Genocide Investigation, University of Huddersfield; Museum’s 2025–26 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar 

Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles, McBride Professor of History Emerita, University of Maine; Museum’s 2026–27 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar

Moderator
Dr. Elise Boxer, Director, Institute of American Indian Studies; Associate Professor of History and Native American Studies, University of South Dakota

Commentator
Gerald J. Steinacher, James A. Rawley Professor of History, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

This in-person event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more information, please contact Dr. Elise Boxer at 605.658.6681 or elise.boxer@usd.edu.

Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff of Baltimore, Maryland, were active philanthropists in the United States and abroad, focusing especially on Jewish learning and scholarship, music, the arts, and humanitarian causes. Their children, Eleanor Katz and Harvey M. Meyerhoff, former member and chairman emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, have endowed this lecture.

_{The mission of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is to ensure the long-term growth and vitality of Holocaust Studies. To do that, it is essential to provide opportunities for new generations of scholars. The vitality and the integrity of Holocaust Studies require openness, independence, and free inquiry, so that new ideas are generated and tested through peer review and public debate. The opinions of scholars expressed before, during, or after their activities with the Mandel Center do not represent and are not endorsed by the Mandel Center or the Museum.}