LOS ANGELES — The 2016-2017 Center Fellow at University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will be Alexander Korb, PhD, director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester and scholar of the Holocaust in southeastern Europe.
Korb will be in residence at USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles in spring and summer 2017 and will give a public lecture about his research during his stay.
Korb received his PhD in history from Humboldt University in Berlin and since 2010 has been a lecturer in modern European history at the University of Leicester, UK. He has received research fellowships from Yad Vashem, Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna and Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena and has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed books and journals.
Foundation, Korb will conduct research for his upcoming book project, A Multitude of Lethal Attacks: Collaboration and Mass Violence in Southeastern Europe, 1940-1946. The book will focus on the intersection between violent policies originating from the state and from local authorities, the transfer and flow of ideas, people and perceptions between states, and when and how mass violence ends. Korb will focus on southern and Eastern Europe, including Croatia, Serbia and Greece.
“There were cases of ethnic cleansing and cases of civil war during the Second World War in eastern Europe of which the Holocaust formed a part,” Korb said. “In our book we want to explore how the Holocaust intertwined with other cases of mass violence.”
Korb hopes that the Visual History Archive will help him get a better sense of the victims’ perspectives, both Jews and non-Jews. While historical records provide accounts of violence from the point of view of the perpetrators, it can be difficult for historians to understand what was happening from the viewpoint of those who were persecuted without resources like the Visual History Archive.