Several photographs of the Holocaust have achieved the status of visual icons. Other stages on the road to mass murder, however, have been less well documented through photography. In many instances, this visual material was only discovered decades after the war and is now dispersed across various locations. The workshop aims to present and analyze photographic and film materials, discussing how this valuable visual content can be utilized for research purposes and in museums and other educational settings. The venue for the workshop will be Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum (https://www.9fortomuziejus.lt/en/home/). The Ninth Fort is a historically significant space for this project, because in 1941 it was one of the final destinations of deportations from the German Reich.
The starting point is the Berlin research project #lastseen, which researched, assigned, and analyzed photographs of Jews shortly before the deportation s occurred. For more information on the project, please refer to https://atlas.lastseen.org/ Until now, researchers working on the project have mainly analyzed material depicting the departure point of deportees. For the first time, the workshop will focus on places of deportation in the former Reichskommissariat Ostland, now part of the Baltic States, thereby linking and contextualizing different historical narratives.
We will explore the importance of researching visual sources alongside textual ones, highlighting the significance of photographs and their contribution to historical research. One aim of this call is to explore methodologies of photography, photo analysis, empirical research, and the consolidation of historical photographic documents from different sources. Another objective is to demonstrate how visual material can be used in a contemporary way for museum and educational purposes.
To discuss and analyze all these historical and methodological issues, the Vilnius branch of the GHI Warsaw and the Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum invite you to a workshop in Kaunas in the last week of November 2025. (We will finalize our plans by the end of July.)
We intend to foster discussions among advanced students, historians, and cultural studies scholars, mainly from the Baltic region, to explore the following issues:
What is known about the deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria to Kaunas, Riga, and other cities?
Are there any eyewitness testimonies, documents, or photographs of the deportations from Germany and Austria?
Photographs as historical sources - how can photographs be evaluated as documents?
Which photos from events of the persecution and murder of Jews that took place in the Baltic region during the same period can be examined as historical sources?
We expect short (20-minute) presentations on the questions mentioned earlier or case studies.
Another objective is to demonstrate how visual material that has been discovered can be utilized in a contemporary manner for museum and educational purposes.
We welcome submissions from researchers at all stages of their academic careers, including doctoral candidates, early-career scholars, and established academics. Limited financial assistance will be available to support travel and accommodation costs, with priority given to early-career researchers and those without institutional funding. Please submit an abstract (up to 350 words), a brief narrative biography, and an indication of whether you are applying for financial support by 25 July 2025 to leiserowitz@dhi.waw.pl. Please also direct further inquiries to this address.
