Holocaust and War Research Group
Bringing together the History of WW2 and the Holocaust
For too many years, the historical accounts of World War Two and the Holocaust evolved independently, they were seen as two distinct academic fields with separate departments, journals and conferences. This divide was also obvious in the public sphere in movies, fiction and other media, it was also apparent in separate shelves in bookstores.
However, in recent years, there has been a growing recognition and willingness to perceive these two big stories as interconnected, not only chronologically but also essentially in ideology and practice.
By examining World War II and the Holocaust as interconnected history, we gain a deeper understanding of both events and their complex relationship. The war set the stage for the implementation of the Holocaust, providing the context, conditions, and ideological influence that enabled the mass persecution and murder of millions of people. Antisemitism and the goal of ’a world without Jews’ on the other hand influenced decision making during the war and should be seen an important Nazi war aim.
Conferences in Hebrew
Researchers Workshop: 80 Years to the warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 2023
https://wgalil.ac.il/research/warsaw-ghetto/
Researchers Workshop: 80 Years to the outbreak of WW2 , Septemver 2022
Our Team
The “War and Holocaust Research group” of the Holocaust studies program in Western Galilee College was established to advance research and teaching that will bring together the history of World War Two and the history of the Holocaust and show their intrinsic interconnection.
To this goal we organize online and in-person conferences and seminars, build academic cooperations with scholars worldwide and teach two distinct courses on WW2 and the Holocaust.
We are Dr. Yaron Pasher, researcher of logistics of war and mass murder on the Eastern front, Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern, researcher of Jewish partisans in Lithuania and Belorussia and Dr. Boaz Cohen, Head of the Holocaust Studies program, Western Galilee College.
Dr. Yaron Pasher
Member of Faculty at Western Galillee College. He teaches history in the Holocaust studies program as well as in the departments of interdisciplinary studies and Logistics. Pasher’s field of expertise is in comparative history of the second world war and the Holocaust, integrating also Modern Jewish history, strategic thought and wartime logistics in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
Pasher was a fellow at The International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and has held a fellowship with the Claims Conference for several years. His book “Holocaust Versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler’s “Final Solution” undermined the German War Effort” was published with University Press of Kansas in 2015. He is currently working on his second book about Albert Ganzenmüller and the Reichsbahn and co editing a special volume commemorating 80 years to the German invasion of the USSR -to be published with University Press of Kansas Modern War Studies Series in 2024.
Research interests
Comparative history, Military History, Holocaust studies, history of Third Reich, 19th -20th Century History, History of logistics and strategic thought.
Publications:
Pasher, Y. (2015). Holocaust Versus Wehrmacht : How Hitler’s “Final Solution” undermined the German War Effort .University Press of Kansas – Modern War Studies.
Zisenwine, J., & Pasher, Y. (2016). Alfred Gottwaldt (1949-2015) In Memoriam. Yad Vashem Studies, 44.
Offer, M., & Pasher, Y. (2017). Medicine and Urology in Eretz-Israel In the First Half of the Twentieth Century and in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich.
Michman D. & Pasher, Y. (2019) (ed.), Search and Research – Lectures and Papers (25), Weinberg, Gerhard L., The Holocaust, Seventy-Five Years after it Ended: A Panoramic View of Achievements and Challenges in Research and Interpretation, (Yad Vashem, Jerusalen). (
Pasher Y. (June.2021) “Ideological Logistics: Between the final Solution and the German War Machine” Bishvil Hazikaron no. 38 (Hebrew) (Journal for Holocaust Education and Studies), Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
In the press
Pasher Y. How the “Final Solution” Program ruined the Nazis , Saloona, 1/5/19.
Pasher Y. Perhaps enough with the Generals – Mida, 3/4/19.
In Preparation:
Pasher Y. “Blaming Hitler – German Generals explaining the war and the Holocaust”, in Pasher Y, Ozacky Stern D., Cohen B. (eds) “Barbarossa”: 80 years to the German invasion of the USSR, University Press of Kansas, 2024.
Pasher, Y., Albert Ganzenmüller The “engine” Behind the German War Machine and the Final Solution, (University Press of Kansas)?
Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern, researcher of Jewish partisans in Lithuania and Belorussia
Dr. Daniela Ozacky Stern is a scholar of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. She is a lecturer at the Holocaust Studies Program at Western Galilee College, Israel, and a researcher at the Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University. She was the director of Moreshet Holocaust Archive for over a decade. Ozacky Stern earned a PhD in Jewish history at the University of Haifa, focusing on the Jewish partisans in Lithuania and Belarus during the Holocaust. She earned a master’s degree from Tel-Aviv University, and her thesis dealt with Nazi propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels. This thesis was published as a book. Ozacky Stern conducted postdoctoral research at Yad Vashem and was a USHMM EHRI fellow. Her publications deal with Jewish partisans in Eastern Europe, the Vilna Ghetto, and Holocaust documentation.
List of publications (selected):
Books
Ozacky Stern, D. (2022). Goebbels: Nazi Master of Illusion: The Destructive Power of Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda and the Holocaust. Lazar Institute for the Research of WWII and the Holocaust. http://bitly.ws/MkTZ
Ozacky Stern, D. and S. Ozacky Lazar (2023). Forgotten Heroes: Chaim and Chaya Lazar’s Journey to Expose the Truth about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Lazar Institute for the Research of WWII and the Holocaust. http://bitly.ws/NaYj
Articles
Ozacky Stern, D. (2022). Guerrilla War in the Mountains: Experiences of Jewish Fighters in the Slovak National Uprising and Partisan Resistance, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 35(2): 226-254.
Ozacky Stern, D. (2022). Collective documentation from the beginning of WWII: the ‘rikuz’ in Vilna as a case study, Jewish Culture and History 23(2): 115-136.
Ozacky Stern, D. (2021). Resistance in Another Way: The Life and Death of Zelig Kalmanovich, the ‘Prophet’ of the Vilna Ghetto, Jewish Culture and History 22(3): 253-271.
Ozacky Stern, D. (2021). Executions of Jewish Partisans in the Lithuanian Forests – The Case of Natan Ring, International Journal of Military History and Historiography 40: 219-244.
Ozacky Stern, D. (2021). The Forest as a Synagogue: Upholding Jewish Tradition and Religion in the Partisan Units, Tsaytshrift, Vol. 7: 152-166.
Ozacky Stern, D. (2020). ‘My experience in 1942-45 granted me a clear vision of life that I cannot escape from, for better or worse’: Shmuel Ramati’s long journey from Nováky camp to Israel with no legs. Judaica et Holocaustica, Vol. 11 (2) 61-76.
Dr. Boaz Cohen, Head of the Holocaust Studies program, Western Galilee College.
Dr. Boaz Cohen is an historian, is head of the Holocaust Studies program of the Western Galilee College in Akko, Israel. He also teaches at the Shaanan College in Haifa and is an affiliated research fellow at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the UCL Institute for Advanced Studies. His research focuses on the aftermath of the Holocaust and its social, cultural and intellectual history and on Jewish and Israeli post-Holocaust society. He also has a strong interest in the history of WWII and its interconnectedness with the Holocaust. His current research focuses on work with survivor children after the Holocaust, their rehabilitation and the collection of their testimonies. He is co-founder with Dr. Verena Buser of the “Children of War, Holocaust and Genocide” project dedicated to the relevance of historical knowledge on child rehabilitation after WW2 and the Holocaust for work with today’s war and Genocide affected children, https://cwg1945.org
He is the author of Israeli Holocaust Research: Birth and Evolution Routledge 2013
https://www.routledge.com/Israeli-Holocaust-Research-Birth-and-Evolution/Cohen/p/book/9781138055094
and of Frühe Holocaustforschung. Konflikte, Persönlichkeiten, Herausforderungen, Metropol, Berlin 2022
He is co-editor of volumes on Holocaust and Film (2013) and Survivor Historians (2015), and editor of Was their Voice heard? The Early Holocaust Testimonies of Child Survivors (Hebrew 2016).
https://www.magnespress.co.il/book/%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%A2_%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D-3983
Dr. Cohen is the convener and organizer of several Holocaust Studies conferences in the Western Galilee College including the international conference series The Future of Holocaust Testimonies, the sixth of which was held in July 2022.
