Nazi Propaganda in Occupied Eastern Europe and the Colonial World

Call for Applications

Workshop Dates: August 4–15, 2025 Application deadline: February 14, 2025 Applications must be submitted in English via our online application.

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum invites applications for the 2025 Jacob and Yetta Gelman International Research Workshop Nazi Propaganda in Occupied Eastern Europe and the Colonial World. The Mandel Center will co-convene this workshop with Stanislovas Stasiulis, Lithuanian Institute of History, and Stefan Ihrig, University of Haifa. The workshop is scheduled for August 4–15, 2025, and will take place at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

While much scholarship has examined the communication strategies of Nazi propaganda and its impact on the Holocaust and antisemitism, the role of local intellectuals and collaborators—both in occupied Eastern Europe and in colonial and semi-colonial regions in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa—remains underexplored. This workshop seeks to address these gaps by focusing on the adaptive nature of Nazi propaganda across these different contexts and the active participation of local journalists, writers, and intellectuals in advancing the Nazi agenda. In Eastern Europe, propaganda exploited ethnic divisions and pre-existing prejudices, while in colonial regions, Nazi messaging was tailored to harness anti-colonial sentiments, religious affiliations, and nationalist movements. Collaborators in both settings helped disseminate antisemitic narratives and racial ideologies, with Nazi authorities positioning themselves as allies against imperial powers.

This workshop will examine how the Nazi regime crafted messages to mobilize local populations both within occupied Europe and among colonial subjects under British, French, and other European imperial rule in order to address a variety of questions about the adaptability of Nazi propaganda across different regions. How did Nazi propaganda differ in its aims and messaging across occupied Europe and colonial regions? How were anti-colonial and anti-imperial sentiment and religious identity weaponized for Nazi purposes? How did propaganda materials—whether newly created or adapted from pre-war discourses—reflect local biases and stereotypes? How did Nazi narratives about Jews and Zionism resonate or differ across these contexts? How effective was this propaganda in gaining support or shaping the attitudes of local populations? How did the Nazis use Soviet crimes to disseminate antisemitism and spread the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism among the local societies in occupied Eastern Europe? How did the Nazi regime attempt to undermine British, French, or other imperial powers through propaganda targeting their colonial subjects? 

We invite applications that address, but are not limited to, the following themes from historical, political, and cultural perspectives:

• The influence of local conditions (political, ethnic, and social) on Nazi propaganda

• The collaboration of local intellectuals with the Nazis in producing antisemitic and exclusionary images targeting Jews, Roma, Poles, Russians, and other ethnic or social groups

• Comparative analyses of propaganda strategies and intellectual involvement across different occupied and colonized regions

• Biographical and case studies of individual collaborators and their involvement in creating propaganda material

• The role of pre-war stereotypes and their transformation under Nazi rule, as well as the effectiveness of propaganda in reshaping social dynamics

• The media and communication channels (e.g., radio broadcasts, leaflets, newspapers) used to disseminate Nazi propaganda

Participants are encouraged to present case studies, biographical research on collaborators, or analyses of specific propaganda objects (e.g., broadcasts, pamphlets, and archival documents). Comparative approaches are highly encouraged to uncover connections and distinctions between these different contexts.  

The workshop's daily sessions will consist of presentations and roundtable discussions led by participants, as well as discussions with Museum staff and research in the Museum’s collections. The workshop will be conducted in English.

Museum Resources

The Museum's David M. Rubenstein National Institute for Holocaust Documentation houses an unparalleled repository of Holocaust evidence that documents the fate of victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others. The Museum’s comprehensive collection contains millions of documents, artifacts, photos, films, books, and testimonies. The Museum’s Database of Holocaust Survivor and Victim Names contains records on people persecuted during World War II under the Nazi regime, including Jews and Roma and Sinti. In addition, the Museum possesses the holdings of the International Tracing Service (ITS), which contains more than 200 which contains more than 200 million digital images of documentation on millions of victims of Nazism—people arrested, deported, killed, put to forced labor and slave labor, or displaced from their homes and unable to return at the end of the war. Many of these records have not been examined by scholars, offering unprecedented opportunities to advance the field of Holocaust and genocide studies.

The Museum’s related collections include:

• Records from German authorities and state institutions of Axis-aligned countries, such as the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the Auswärtiges Amt, the Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete, the Propaganda Department of the German Armed Forces, the Deutsche Polizeieinrichtungen in den okkupierten Gebieten, and the Romanian Ministry of National Propaganda, among others

• Records of war crimes investigations and trials that document the use of propaganda created by the Extraordinary State Commission to Investigate German-Fascist Crimes Committed on Soviet Territory (ChGK), the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Republic of Georgia, the courts and prosecutors' offices in East Germany, the Soviet State Security Services (NKVD), the Estonian KGB (State Security Committee), the Latvian KGB (State Security Committee), the Najwyższy Trybunał Narodowy, the Archives of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and the Eichmann Trial, among others 

• Records documenting antisemitic propaganda in North Africa, including from the National Library of Morocco

• Records from the Portuguese Ministerio Negocios Estrangeiros Holocausto documenting German propaganda activities in the Portuguese colonies

• The Berlin collection of YIVO, containing reports, clippings, and other documents generated by the Reich Ministry for Propaganda and the Reich Civil Administration for the Occupied Eastern Territories

• Nazi propaganda posters, including the German Poster Collection and the Parole der Woche poster collection, consisting of broadsides and posters from the Slogan of the Week series of propaganda posters issued by the Nazi Party in Germany from 1936 to 1943

• The Katz Ehrenthal Collection of over 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States

• Oral histories of refugees and survivors, including the USC Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, oral histories of non-Jewish/non-Romani witnesses from across Eastern Europe collected as part of the Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, and the Yahad-in Unum oral history collection of interviews conducted in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus with witnesses to the mass killing of Jews and Roma

• Propaganda films in the Steve Spielberg Film and Video Archive

Participants will have access to both the Museum’s downtown campus and the David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation and Research Center in Bowie, MD. To search the Museum's collections, please visit our Collections Search.

Application Details

Applications are welcome from scholars affiliated with universities, research institutions, or memorial sites and in any relevant academic discipline, including anthropology, art history, economics, genocide studies, geography, history, Jewish studies, law, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology, religion, and Romani studies, and others. Applications are encouraged from scholars at all levels of their careers, from Ph.D. candidates to senior faculty. 

The Mandel Center will reimburse the costs of round-trip economy-class air tickets to/from the Washington, D.C. metro area and related incidental expenses, up to a maximum reimbursable amount calculated by home institution location, which will be distributed within 6–8 weeks of the workshop’s conclusion. The Mandel Center will also provide hotel accommodation for the duration of the workshop. Participants are required to circulate a draft paper in advance of the program. Participants must commit to attending the entire workshop.

The deadline for receipt of applications is Friday, February 14, 2025. Applications must include:

• A short biography

• A curriculum vitae

• A list of any related publications and/or ongoing research projects

• An abstract of no more than 500 words outlining the specific project that the applicant plans to research and is prepared to present during the program

Applications must be submitted in English via our online application.

Admission will be determined without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender (sexual orientation or gender identity), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or reprisal. The Museum also prohibits any form of workplace discrimination or harassment.

Questions should be directed to researchworkshops@ushmm.org.

This workshop has been made possible through the generosity of the Jacob and Yetta Gelman Endowment at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.