12 August 2019
AGBU Europe has received a grant from the European Commission to lead a project under its Europe for Citizens Programme. The project entitled “Ideas and their Consequences: Genocide and International Justice after 1919” will take place in 2020, in partnership with the Lepsius Haus in Potsdam, the European Union of Jewish Students and Roma organization Phiren Amenca.
The project aims to explore- and to educate a wider public in Europe about- the growth of two opposing movement of ideas which developed after the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. On the one hand, the movement for international justice and for the rescue of the victims emerged, as the allies established tribunals to try the perpetrators of atrocities and established the first High Commission for Refugees. On the other hand, the war atrocities in Europe and ethnic violence against the Armenians and other Christians in the declining Ottoman Empire inspired “population politics” and encouraged the movement towards radical nationalism in Germany, setting the ideological foundations of the worst atrocities the century was yet to experience.
A Conference in Berlin
The project will feature an academic conference in Berlin, entitled “Ideas and their Consequences: Genocide and International Justice after 1919”. The conference will bring together key academics in the field, mostly historians, from different countries and will aim to pool the latest knowledge on the subject. It will aim to provide new, insightful information on how events can make toxic ideas – or their antidote- grow. How, for instance, Germany’s humiliation in Versailles contrasted with Turkey’s simultaneous resurgence to inspire nationalists in Germany.
Dissemination in Europe
The conference’s output will be used to produce an information pack summarizing the conference’s findings. The project will also include the production of online video interviews of key speakers, the creation of a website presenting the results of the project, as well as a traveling exhibition and discussion events in five European cities following the conference in Berlin.
The project aims to persuade relevant policy-making and academic community that the genocide of 1915 is very much a part of European history, that it inspired horror, compassion, fascination and passionate debate before, during and after the event, in France, Germany and the UK and other countries, and that it profoundly influenced political thinking in Europe.
More information to come at: http://agbueurope.org/programs/european-remembrance-2/
