Exhumations, Memory, and the Return of Civil War Ghosts in Spain

Francisco Ferrandiz, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory in Latin America and Southern Europe.
Thursday, May 8
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
1-109 Herbert M Hanson, Jr Hall

Since 2000, the exhumation of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the Post-War years, mostly involving the largely abandoned graves of civilians killed in the Francoist rearguard by paramilitary groups, has become a central element in contemporary social and political debates in the country about the nature of the armed conflict and the dictatorial regime following it. Although exhumations have become a crucial tool for symbolic reparation and have triggered claims for justice for the crimes committed and now unearthed, the social process unleashed by their opening is way larger, and relates to the emergence of a fragmented and heterogeneous political culture focused on the memory of the defeated in the war.

In this talk, the complexity and dynamism of this process is analyzed, including from political and legal initiatives of great social and media impact to local actions on the ground, at times failed, ephemeral or almost imperceptible, but no less crucial. Regional differences, associated to uneven public memory policies, will also be considered.
Organized by the IAS Reframing Mass Violence Research Collaborative. Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program,the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the European Studies Consortium.

Alejandro Baer to speak about Kristallnacht in Civil War Spain

Kristallnacht in Civil War Spain
Tuesday, November 13
Room 1210 Heller Hall
4:00 p.m.

"Germany introduces forceful measures against the Hebrews.
A clear warning to international Jewry never again to make attempts on the lives of Germans." - Ideal, Granada, November 13, 1938.

Professor Baer will talk about the contrasting treatment given to the news of the German anti-Jewish pogroms on November 9 & 10, 1938 by the Francoist and Republican sides during the Spanish Civil War.

The Francoist press met the news with approval and glee, in contrast to the condemnations expressed in the Republican papers, which offered solidarity and support to the victims, even as the legitimate Spanish government approached it's own death agony.

The Spanish republicans soon recognized that their fate was intertwined with that of European Jews.

Professor Baer is the new director and Stephen C. Feinstein Chair of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He is a distinguished scholar of Holocaust memory and testimony, and comes to Minnesota after serving on the sociology faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität-München in Germany.

His books include Holocausto. Recuerdo y representación (Holocaust: Remembrance and Representation) and El testimonio audiovisual. Imagen y memoria del Holocausto (Audiovisual Testimony. Image and Memory of the Holocaust). In addition he has authored numerous articles addressing issues of genocide, memory, and Anti-Semitism. He is currently engaged in research focusing on the uses and abuses of Holocaust history and memory in the Spanish-speaking world as well as the trans-nationalization of memory.

Sponsored by: Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies,Department of History, European Studies Consortium, Institute for Global Studies and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.