In an interview with Here & Now, Omer Bartov argues Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, a shift from his earlier stance, as ICC warrants target leaders on both sides.
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Omer Bartov
Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Faculty Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Areas of Expertise
Education, Race, Identity & Ethnicity
Areas of Interest
Modern European History, modern warfare, Nazism, Holocaust, genocide, interethnic relations, borderlands, modern Jewish history
Biography
Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony's College, Oxford, Omer Bartov's early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II, analyzed in his books, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945 (1985) and Hitler’s Army (1991). He then turned to the links between total war and genocide, discussed in his books Murder in Our Midst (1996), Mirrors of Destruction (2000), and Germany’s War and the Holocaust (2003), as well as to the role of stereotypes in representations of violence, leading to his study, The “Jew” in Cinema (2005). Bartov’s growing interest in Eastern Europe is reflected in his study Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (2007), which investigates the politics of memory in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. As a framework for this research, he led a multi-year collaborative project at the Watson Institute, culminating in the co-edited volume, Shatterzone of Empires. Bartov's most recent book is Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), where he reconstructs the transition of an interethnic community from long-term coexistence to genocidal violence. He is now working on a monograph titled "Tales from a Vanished World: Small-Town Galician Encounter Modernity." Bartov directed the project “Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples” at the Watson Institute in 2015-2018, and now heads a three-year student exchange program between Brown and the Hebrew University. He is in the early stages of researching a book on “Israel, Palestine: A Personal Political History.”
Research
My new book, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, investigates the dynamic that transforms a community of coexistence into one of genocide. Composed of a mixed Jewish-Polish-Ukrainian population for centuries, in World War II Buczacz experienced the murder of its Jewish inhabitants by Germans and local collaborators, and the ethnic cleansing of its Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists. While the general outlines of the Holocaust are known, the manner in which genocide unfolded on the ground is not well understood. By delving deeper into the past and providing the perspective of all groups involved in the event, I argue, we can better grasp local genocide.
My next research project, “Israel, Palestine: A Personal Political History,” will examine the links to the land by the first generation of Jews and Palestinians born into the newly established state of Israel.
Israel-Palestine, Lands and Peoples: An Initiative Led by Omer Bartov
Publications
Publications
Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples, edited volume (New York: Berghahn Books, forthcoming 2020).
Voices on War and Genocide: Three Accounts of the Two World Wars in One Galician Town, edited (New York: Berghahn Books, forthcoming June 2020).
Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, edited volume, completely revised second edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2015).
Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, edited volume with Eric D. Weitz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).
Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007).
The “Jew” in Cinema: From The Golem to Don’t Touch My Holocaust (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005).
Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
Recent News
In an interview with TRT World, Omer Bartov warns that Netanyahu's extremist policies could lead to Israel's eventual implosion.
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In CounterPunch, Omer Bartov criticizes the IDF for violating fundamental rules of war and urges a moral response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, emphasizing the need to protect humanity and dignity amid ongoing violence.
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In an interview with Al Jazeera, Omer Bartov discusses how critics of Israel's actions in Gaza are often labeled anti-Semitic amid rising global reports of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
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In an interview with DW News, Omer Bartov reflected on the one-year anniversary of Hamas' attack on Israel.
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In Le Monde, Omer Bartov argues that Netanyahu’s refusal to end the Gaza war is tied to his political survival and a long-term Zionist vision of Jewish-Israeli control over land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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