Omer Bartov

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.

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).

Teaching

Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples I – Nationalism, Settler Colonialism, Decolonization (undergraduate seminar)

Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples II – Future Scenarios (undergraduate seminar)

First Person History in Times of Crisis: Witnessing, Memory, Fiction (graduate seminar)

Talks & Media

Brown Alumni Magazine, May-June 2018: “What Would You Do,” by Julia M. Klein.

Connecticut radio show “Talk of the Town”, hosted by Steve Noxon, February 22, 2018.

Story in the Public Square, the weekly southeast New England PBS and SiriusXM Satellite radio, taped January 23, 2018

News|Recent News

How Instagram turned a Holocaust memoir into a self-help manifesto (comments by Omer Bartov)

November 28, 2022 Vox

Omer Bartov comments for Vox on the misappropriation of the writings of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Bucha

Why Does Russia’s Leadership Keep Saying that Ukrainians Are Nazis? (written by Omer Bartov)

May 12, 2022 The Wall Street Journal

"Comparing Volodymyr Zelensky to Hitler is absurd, but it fits Vladimir Putin's distorted view of World War II and Russian history", Omer Bartov writes for The Wall Street Journal.

My Ukraine Is Not Yet Lost (an essay by Omer Bartov)

February 28, 2022 New Fascism Syllabus Blog

Omer Bartov penned this essay Ukraine, "...the fate of Ukraine will determine that of the rest of Europe and have a major effect on the rest of the world, including the United States."

Through a glass darkly (written by Omer Bartov)

July 29, 2021 TLS UK

Omer Bartov penned this article on WWII and Nazi Germany based on a recent series of welldocumented studies.

City of the Dead (interview with Omer Bartov) In German

May 4, 2021 Taz

In this interview, Omer Bartov delves into his research of the Holocaust.

UN vows to 'never forget' Holocaust tragedy (Omer Bartov cited)

January 31, 2020 IOL

Omer Bartov is cited in this article for his deliverance of the keynote address at the Durban Holocaust and Genocide Centre's international Holocaust Remembrance Day event on Jan. 27.

Partitions: A Global Perspective

December 4, 2019

In November 2019, Omer Bartov organized the workshop “Partitions: A Global Perspective,” alonsgide Arie Dubnov (George Washington University) to initiate an interdisciplinary academic dialogue between established and junior scholars who study partition from different angles.

People

Biography