Norman M. Naimark

Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, Department of History, Stanford University

Germans, Poles, and the Controversy about the “Museum Against ‘Vertreibung’”
Germany: After Guilt, Friday, March 12, 2010, 4:00 – 6:00

Biography

Naimark M. Naimark was educated at Stanford University, where he received his BA (1966), MA (1968), and PhD. For sixteen years he was professor of history at Boston University and fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard University. He has been in the history department at Stanford University since 1988 and holds the Robert and Florence McDonnell Chair in East European History. He is also fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution and of the Institute of International Studies. He is the author of a number of books including The Russians in Germany (Harvard, 1995) and Fires of Hatred (Harvard, 2001). 

Abstract: Germans, Poles, and the Controversy about the “Museum Against ‘Vertreibung’”

This paper will review the main lines of the decade-long argument between Poles and Germans about the proposed building of a museum in Berlin dedicated to the forced deportation of Germans from Poland at the end of the war and the beginning of the peace. The controversy about the museum and about the history of the postwar period demonstrates the complicated relationship between domestic struggles over history and public memory and the politics of interstate relations.